Firebirds Soaring (54 page)

Bonechewer spoke again of the UnNamed, and this time he had some detailed suggestions. A group of them existed in the mountains that lay in the sunrise direction from clan ground. Winter had come early to those peaks. The UnNamed ones there were struggling. If Ratha wished, he could arrange a first meeting between them and the Named.

“They are weakened by hunger, so they are not as great a threat,” said Bonechewer, crossing his paws.

“Are they savages, or are they more like you?” Ratha asked. “I mean, are they clever?”

“Not as clever, but no one else is,” he said with his familiar matter-of-fact conceit. “They vary, but none are completely mindless. I wouldn’t burden you with that. They have wit enough to be grateful.” He rolled his hindquarters out so that he lay in a half-sphinx, facing Ratha. “Have them form their own group, a sort of daughter-clan of your people.”

Ratha agreed. Taking in a number of strangers all at once could be disruptive and possibly dangerous. She remembered all too well the adopted orange-eyed adolescent who became the tyrannical Shongshar.

She could treat these UnNamed ones somewhat the same as True-of-voice and his tribe. She would settle the newcomers in their own area, give them meat, and then send some herders with a small mixed flock to teach the strangers clan ways. Yes, that would work, she thought, growing excited. The clan would be having its own cub, even if adopted.

Carefully she would let the best of the new group mingle with the Named. Even more carefully chosen ones might breed with her people. The Named badly needed variety as well as numbers. The risk of mindless young remained but could be managed. Any cubs not fit to be Named might be fostered out to the face-tail hunters.

“I can see by your eyes that the trail to your dream is clearing,” said Bonechewer. “There remains, however, one small barrier.”

Ratha cocked her head at him in a wordless question. He laid a forepaw toward the campfire. “That.”

“The Red Tongue? My creature?”

“The UnNamed fear it. As long as you have it, they won’t trust you. No.” He help up a paw as Ratha tried to interrupt. “I am not asking you to abandon ‘your creature’ or whatever you call it. Keep the thing in its hole. Use it for warmth if you must, though I prefer a good heavy pelt.”

Ratha stepped on her tail to keep it from lashing. “We need the Red Tongue against raiders,” she argued.

“Not if you help those who raid because of starvation.”

“The UnNamed aren’t the only ones who prey. We’ve had trouble with bristle-mane hyenas and others. Don’t ask me to risk the safety of the Named, Bonechewer. I won’t. Even for you.”

“I understand. You are walking on a narrow branch, clan leader. You have to balance carefully between what is now and what could be. If you are careful, you can have both. You must think well in order to be careful, so I will leave you now.” He paused. “If you make the right decision, you might get everything you want. Even me.”

 

When he was gone, Ratha knew she should sleep, but her mind was in a muddle. She lay with her chin on her paws, staring into the flame.

“Bonechewer isn’t asking that much, my creature,” she murmured to the fire. “We’ll keep you safe in the fire-den, but we won’t use as many of your cubs. I know why the UnNamed fear you. Sometimes I fear you. You warm our bodies, yet you burn our minds. You entice us to dance before you, yet you twist our spirits like a green twig curling in your heart. You draw us close, then lunge, as if to kill. . . .”

She thought of everything that had happened since she tamed the Red Tongue. She brought her creature to the clan so that the Named could survive. Well, they did.

To wield torches against their enemies, they had to overlook or accept the ugliness and suffering that the Red Tongue could bring.

She remembered the old clan leader, Meoran. Perhaps she had not consciously remembered all the details of his death, but they came to her now.

Was it the Red Tongue’s rage or her own that had rammed the flaming branch through the bottom of his jaw? She’d heard his saliva sizzling in the heat, his jowls blistering, crusting, charring. . . . He had died in horror, the oils in his fur crackling, then lighting his skin, the skin itself steaming, then blackening.

She looked away from the fire, wondering if anyone really deserved that kind of death.

When she looked back, she remembered the image she had dreamed while struggling against the usurper Shongshar. Of how a fire burning before her had come alive and changed shape, taking the cat-form of the Named. How the Firecat had stalked free of its prison of log and tinder, then stood over her with ember eyes and flame teeth, hissing, “I am the one who rules.”

Ratha did not know when she slipped from thought into slumber, but the Firecat still prowled before her, seeking prey. Then the apparition’s deadly light was cast back at it in the sheen of copper fur. In Ratha’s dream, the lava-red eyes met those of clear amber.

Flame-sharp teeth clashed against one white fang and the broken remnants of the other.

Somehow she could not move and only watched as Bonechewer fought the Firecat. She could see from his eyes that every strike against the Firecat was as useless as slashing at a flame. Worse, it brought agony, blackening claws and searing skin.

The Firecat’s strikes raked flame into Bonechewer’s skin, and the lines of fire deepened and extended. He screamed, rose thrashing, and then toppled. She watched him die, the Firecat above him, then on him, and then in him, turning his breath to smoke and his flesh to charcoal that cracked open, showing an evil red within.

Then, as his shriek died in her ears along with her own scream, the Firecat turned from its victim to her. . . .

Abruptly Ratha woke, half on her back, half on her side. All four legs were up and rigid. Her pawpads were so sweat-slicked that the sweat dripped on her chest and belly. Her claws extended so hard that her toes cramped. Even her nose-leather was wet.

For an instant she locked in that position, still embattled by her dream. Then, realizing that the horror had been miraculously swept away, she let everything go and collapsed into a heap, unsure whether the vision was real. A rush of gratitude swept over her that it wasn’t.

She drew a shuddering breath. No Firecat. No charred corpse. Not this time.

She rolled on her side and nearly put her feet in the fire. No, it was the campfire, not the substance of the Firecat. But were the two all that different?

Sudden fear sent Ratha rolling, wriggling, and scrambling back from the campfire, as if she had seen the glint of the Firecat’s eye in its heart.

Perhaps she had.

 

As Ratha had once crept toward the light and warmth of her creature, now she crept away from it. She huddled and watched it flicker from a distance, chilled by wind and by fear.

Maybe Bonechewer was right. Maybe he was more than right. This thing she called her own; could it be a deeper evil than any herd-preying raiders? Yes, it had saved her people, but at what cost? Should the clan put the Red Tongue aside, not only for the sake of the soon-to-be new members, but for the sake of the Named themselves? This creature that disguised itself as warm, protective, and benign, she thought, would it eventually consume the Named and their world as it had consumed Bonechewer?

What have you done to us,
she thought, eyeing the fire.
What will you do to us?

A sudden clear realization came.

Then a wry scrap of thought entered Ratha’s mind
. Fessran will think I’m crazy.

 

“No!” Thakur stamped his forefoot. “Ratha, you are not going to sit out alone on the edge of clan ground and wait for who knows what. Especially without a fire or even a torch.”

She itched to bare her fangs at him. His scatting sensitivity had dragged it all out of her again.

“I’ve never been fond of the Red Tongue,” he said, flattening his ears and raising his nape, “but its protection works.”

Emotion and lack of sleep had left Ratha dizzy and exhausted. Unable to control herself, she flared back at him. “You are not clan leader and you will not tell me what to do. I told you why I can’t have the Red Tongue near me.”

Thakur put his paw on her and withdrew it. “You’re hot. You’ve got a fever. You’re sick, Ratha. I’ll take you to my den. I’ll chew up some medicine plants for you. Then you’ll sleep and get well.”

“I’m not sick. I have to meet Bonechewer. Alone.”

“Ratha . . .”

“No!”

His lip twitched back, showing a fang, but he remained sitting. Softly he said, “I think I should get Thistle-chaser and Quiet Hunter. Maybe they can reach you.”

“You will not.” Ratha snarled, “You will go and teach your herding class in the meadow. You will not interfere. Am I understood? ”

His reply came slowly and sadly. “Yes, clan leader.” His voice was low.

Her own softened. “Thakur, much good will come from this. I can’t tell you everything now; it is still too soon.”

“I hope that what will come is good, clan leader,” he said, and padded away.

 

The next evening found Ratha crouching by the Red Tongue’s empty nest on the edge of clan ground. She shivered. Part of her wanted the fire again, but part of her was relieved that she didn’t have it. She still carried the vivid dream-images of Bonechewer’s clash with the Firecat.

With her treeling, Ratharee, she waited in the moonlight. It was a long wait and she almost dozed off before she heard footsteps. More than one set. Her heart leaped up in hope. Bonechewer had done as he promised and brought UnNamed ones down from the mountains.

Gently Ratha nosed Ratharee off her back and up the nearest tree. The treeling blinked, curled her tail up in a question.

“With strangers around, you’ll be safer up here,” Ratha told her. When the treeling was well hidden among the branches, Ratha trotted toward the sound of the footsteps and called, “Bonechewer, I’m here.”

The footsteps stopped, leaving silence. Ratha halted, puzzled, and went farther. She knew she was right at the edge of clan ground.

“Bonechewer, where are you?”

Again came silence. An uneasy feeling began crawling over Ratha. She didn’t know Bonechewer’s companions. They might be UnNamed ones seeking the clan’s help. Or they might not. Her voice sharpened with the realization that she might be walking into an ambush.

“Bonechewer! Show yourself!”

But he was Bonechewer, her first mate; the one who had taken her in and taught her to hunt when the clan exiled her. She wouldn’t have survived without him. He had cared deeply about her and still did. If she couldn’t trust him, whom could she trust? And he offered her the fulfillment of an ideal she had long desired.

“Over here, clan cat,” came his soft reply. Relief washed over Ratha, making her weak.

“I’ve come alone, without the Red Tongue,” she called back.

“Good,” he said, and emerged from the shadows into the moonlight. Its light on his copper fur shone strangely cold, but his shape and stance were the same.

Ratha’s quickening heartbeat nearly choked her as she bounded toward him. At last she could have what she wanted most, what had eluded her for so long—Bonechewer himself, and everything else.

Images whirled through her head of UnNamed ones coming from all over, seeking the benevolence of the Named, of Thakur teaching UnNamed cubs to herd. Of daughter tribes springing up all around clan ground, a new breed of the Named arising, flourishing. And of all paying her honor for her vision and generosity, a leader not just respected but beloved.

She took one last step to Bonechewer, boldly extended her head for the nose-touch, and was shocked with delight when he met it. His scent was deep, wild, and so rich with promise that her head spun.

Ratha shook herself. She couldn’t get carried away like this. She needed to meet with Bonechewer’s companions, listen to their needs, and make her offer.

“Where are your friends, Bonechewer?” she asked.

He stared at her with an expression she had never seen, while the moon seemed to bleach his eyes from amber to steely white.

“Here,” he said.

Shadowed forms leaped from the bushes on either side and were on Ratha before she could move. Stunned by disbelief, she felt teeth sink into her nape while a clawed weight on her hindquarters flattened her.

“Bonechewer, what are you—” she tried to cry, but a set of jaws closed over her muzzle, cutting off her scream.

She felt as if she’d been flung off a peak into a chasm. She sought refuge in a thought that her enemies were attacking him as well, and the pair must fight to defend themselves. She jerked her head madly to free her teeth, but the jaws around her muzzle bit down hard. She felt a trickle of blood run into her mouth.

Half expecting to see Bonechewer fighting off attackers, she shoved her assailant around until she could see Bonechewer with one eye. With horror, she noted that he was standing free, looking on. She was the only victim in this hunt.

With her jaws clamped shut, she could only scream in her throat and through her nose, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.

This had to be a bad dream, like her dreams of the Firecat. When she opened them, she would be lying by her campfire, Ratharee curled up against her.

But the teeth still dug into her muzzle and fastened in her neck. Sudden rage made Ratha writhe and buck, but her captors subdued her by sinking their teeth deeper.

Her mind jumped around, seeking any answer except the terrible truth. Any answer, no matter how crazy. This must be a trick of some sort, to fool other UnNamed ones who were watching. Yes, that was it. When the ruse was over, Bonechewer would release her, explain to her, lick her wounds, comfort her. . . .