The Tiger and the Wolf (3 page)

There were many wolves in Maniye’s world. Out beyond the
extent of mound and field, the lean grey beasts, her mute kin,
coursed between the trees. They hunted and bred, and everyone
she knew would one day go to join them, just as, in time, their
spirits would be reborn to human mothers of the Wolf tribes.
They were kin and yet they were the enemy, too. They raided
the herds and they culled the weak, devoted to making the lives
of men harder, so that the people themselves became harder,
fiercer, swifter. That was the way of the world, and that was the
way of the Wolf. Maniye could not help feeling a jab of pride at
knowing that her father’s kin ruled the Crown of the World
almost undisputed, while the people of the Deer and Boar paid
tribute.

There was also the wolf that ran in the sky, he who had slunk
into the night above at the start of fall, lean and hungry and
written in stars. He was chasing the herds out of the heavens,
and soon he would hunt the cold winter skies, prowling above
his people each night until he sniffed out the approaching
spring and brought back life to the growing earth, laying it at
their feet like a trophy.

Then there was Wolf whose people she was born to: Winter
Runner, Moon Eater, Many Mouths and the other tribes within
the Jaws of the Wolf, who were masters of the world. Wolf was a
harsh god, but no harsher than life itself. He pushed his people,
howling in the cold nights and sending them hardship, famine
and enemies to fight. He taught them that together they were
stronger than any of them could be alone. And, when they triumphed, as they had triumphed, Wolf was proud of them.
Kalameshli himself said so and, for the Winter Runners, Kalameshli was the very voice of the Wolf.

For Maniye, the Wolf was breathing down her neck. She
could not know how it was for her peers, those others of the
tribe for whom a place within those jaws meant security and
belonging. For her, the Wolf was with her everywhere: the one
set of eyes she could not evade. Wolf was not proud of her;
instead, he sniffed dubiously at her tracks. She could almost
hear his low, suspicious growl as he lifted his head from them.

Not one of mine
, the Wolf reproached her, as she crouched in
her jealously guarded alcove above the hall.
You skulk like a
coyote.You hide like prey.
Below them was all the bustle of a meal
being prepared: Akrit’s wives and kinfolk readying a feast for the
returned hunters, who had brought back not a span of antlers
but a true sacrifice for Wolf’s endless hunger.

‘I am yours,’ she tried to tell the darkness. ‘I am Akrit’s get. I
am born between the Jaws of the Wolf.’ But even to her, the
words sounded false. She was Wolf but she was also Other, and
she had not let go of that part of her birthright. It would be like
cutting away a limb.

The Testing comes soon
, came the Wolf’s dark chuckle.
We will
see then how much of mine you are.
She felt his hot, rank breath.
If she closed her eyes and reached out a hand, she could have
touched those yellow fangs, each longer than her arm: Wolf – the
true Wolf from whom all lesser wolves derived. He was vast, as
large as the sky, as deep as the darkness between trees at midwinter. And yet he fit everywhere, even in this little hidey-hole
she had dug for herself. There was no escaping him.

She did not know if others heard Wolf as she did. Kalameshli
must, of course, but he was a priest and trained to it. She had a
horrible suspicion that she was alone in this fearful communion,
because, of all the youths who were due to be Tested soon, only
she was doubted. The Wolf had a keen nose for weakness.

Her makeshift window beckoned. Impossible, of course, that
either girl or wolf could escape the hall by that means, but she
would go nonetheless. Not yet, for she would be looked for at
her father’s elbow while he ate, obliged to hear the story of how
he caught the Snake – a serpent that would grow longer and
more venomous with each telling. She would sit there in an oval
of perhaps fifty people, her father’s kin and his favourite hunters
and their closest family, and she would sense the presence of
that other for whom no place was laid. The Wolf would watch
his people eat, and prowl about the edge of their firelight. The
rustle of his coat would speak of the advent of winter, and warn
each one of them to do their part in staving off the worst of the
season ahead: mend, stitch, gather, trap, trade, raid, each of
them a part of the greater living thing that was their pack, their
tribe. Then the Wolf would pause in its stalking, its furnace
breath hot in her hair.
But what is this, and what use is it? Is it
anything more than a mouthful, or can it make itself useful?

She would endure. She had always endured. Child of a murdered mother and an uncaring father, constantly under
Kalameshli’s barbed attention and the mockery of her peers, she
had yet survived. She had built a secret life away from them:
inside her head and in all the little spaces left vacant day to day,
season to season. She had sometimes felt she was more Rat than
Wolf. Once, when she was eight, she had even tried to build a
tiny altar of vermin bones, an unthinkable act of heresy and
rebellion. Then she had felt something move in the dark – not
Wolf’s familiar menace but something else, unclean and scuttling, and she had scattered the little bones and never done such
a foolish thing again. Rat was the common enemy of everything
human, as everyone knew.

After the meal tonight, when she could escape the scrutiny of
everyone save for Wolf himself, she would retreat up here, and
once the cold dark had set in, and the chamber below was a
carpet of sleeping bodies, she would make her secret way out
and go hunting. Because, however wretched, dirty and washedout the old man had seemed, there was something new in the
world this night, and soon enough it would be taken away from
her by Kalameshli’s iron knife, by Wolf’s fire-heated jaws. Before
then she would speak to the Snake.

Let the Eyriemen talk about the might of the open sky, its
storms and keening wings. Let Deer and Boar tribe talk of the
growing earth. Wolf was winter, which meant at the same time
that Wolf was fire. Fire was ever hungry, so was Wolf; fire was
life and death in one, so was Wolf. Fire had secrets; fire was a
magic stolen from the sun by that star-coated wolf up in the
heavens.

Kalameshli paused in his hammering, noting the results were
good. He was old, and three young men had learned the secrets
of fire from him to carry on his work. Old, perhaps, but he was
still strong. A life of hammer and knife would do that for you.

His mind was full of calculations, counting the time of his
ham-mer blows, but also counting forwards: the days until
the Horse Society arrived to trade; his stock of new-made tools,
the knives and axe-heads his apprentices had sweated over, that
were so very valuable to barter with. It all seemed meagre, but
then it always did, and there was never enough to trade for
everything the tribe would need, and they would make do. Wolf
never stopped testing his people: Kalameshli had run alongside
him for long enough to know that.

Then there was their stock of the sacred wood, which was
dwindling, and there would be precious little opportunity to get
some more unless he traded his finished iron for it with another
priest. The workers and the slaves who had been out in the
forest felling and burning all summer were back now, yet surely
they had brought in more than this last year?
Is it because I’m old,
that nothing seems as good as it was, or are the years really getting
harder?

The omens last year had been adequate. Running Deer had
given Akrit’s people a decent chase and died in the proper form,
so that his antlers had graced Wolf’s jaws and the quarry’s spirit
had returned to the herd. The rack itself had not been of the
best, but Kalameshli had seen cautious hope there. Now he
wondered if he had fallen victim to complacency. What was Wolf
telling him this year, with the remarkable sacrifice that had fallen
into his hands?

Change
. The forge’s hot breath was the breath of the Wolf. In
Kalameshli’s great-great-grandfather’s time, before ever the
Winter Runners had come to these lands, Wolf had spoken
secrets to his people, to reward them for their sacrifices, their
perseverance, their refusal to bow the head despite their living in
the dark shadow of other tribes. Wolf had spoken of how to
make the wolf-wood from normal wood, by the long, slow burning and his careful breath. Wolf had spoken of how the fierce
heat of burning wolf-wood could draw iron from the red stone,
and how it could turn soft iron into hard. All these things had
become known over generations, but by Kalameshli’s grandfather’s time the bond between Wolf and priest and the secrets of
iron was forged and closed.

In Kalameshli’s grandfather’s time, the Winter Runners had
come south to challenge the masters of these lands. At first they
had fought against the Tiger alongside Deer and Boar. Later,
when they had carved out space for the Wolf’s Shadow, they had
shown those people their new masters. And while the Wolf
might be a hard master, still he was not wantonly cruel as the
previous lords had been.

In Kalameshli’s own time, five times five years ago, when he
had been younger and Akrit had been very young, they had
warred with those old lords, the Fire Shadow People – the
Shadow Eaters who were born between the Claws of the Tiger.
Village by village, valley by valley, they had driven them back,
their hard iron pitted against bronze and stone, their swift packs
against the enemy’s strong champions. The war had been fought
by the Winter Runners here, by other Wolf tribes north and
south, each summer seeing a new offensive, new victories for
the Wolf, new sacrifices for his iron teeth.

But there had been peace for a long time now. The Tiger had
retreated to the high eastern places, its power shattered. The
Deer and Boar accepted the yoke and sent tribute and thralls
and workers to make the Wolf stronger. Life had been good.

That was the problem, Kalameshli guessed. A comfortable
life was a weakening one. Now the Wolf sent them this message:
change or die.
When he came to read the future in the old
Snake’s guts, perhaps the omens would show that it was time for
the Wolf to go to war once more.

Of course his predictions would be tempered by his own
knowledge, for the
girl
was almost grown now, sullen and contrary creature that she was. Akrit’s long-held plans for her could
be put into action, which would indeed mean more war to
extend the Wolf’s Shadow into new lands. Odd how these things
so often worked out.

But there was the matter of the Testing. The girl thought she
was so clever, the way she slunk about the mound, appearing
and disappearing as the whim took her. She thought she could
keep secrets, but Kalameshli had keen eyes and a sharp nose. He
knew precisely what she was about, and the direction her Stepping had taken her.

If she was to be any use to Akrit at all, then she must remain
securely within the Wolf’s jaws. Kalameshli had taken upon himself the responsibility of ensuring that this particularly lengthy
forging could be plucked from the fire and put to work, and he
would do so no matter how hard he had to hammer at the girl,
to beat her into shape.

The meal was a fierce affair, each of Akrit’s hunters striving
to outdo the last with their stories of the chase. Nobody seemed
to remember that the whole endeavour had ended in cowardice
and failure, and yet nobody was boasting about the Snake much
either. Maniye said nothing, because she had learned long
before that drawing attention to herself always ended in pain or
humiliation. She sat in her father’s shadow, at his jostling elbow,
and ate with a grim determination as though every mouthful
might be taken away from her. As it might, of course, if she
made Akrit angry. Just the sight of her seemed to do that, and
she thought it was because he had sired no brothers for her,
meaning she was all he had. He had not intended her as a successor, she knew: no get of her mother’s would ever become
strong within the Winter Runners. That was why, once Maniye
had been born into this half-life, he had sent Broken Axe to rid
the world of his captive wife.

Even the chief’s household ate sparingly. Whatever excess the
year had gifted them was being saved for the grand feast that
would follow after the Testing. Then the tribe would devour
everything that would not last through the winter, slaughter the
animals that could not be fed, and eat fresh any meat that could
not be salted. Preparations were already under way, she knew.
Like so much else, it fell to Kalameshli to determine what was to
be the Wolf’s share, to be eaten now, and what would be set
down for the cold months before the spring. He had already
been making a round of the herds, the sheep and cattle, marking
animals for the slaughter with his brand and scratching tallies
into a flat stone. It was magic, Maniye knew: the Wolf’s secrets
taught only to those who had been chosen for the priesthood. At
the same time, she had spied on Kalameshli for some years now,
and she understood distantly that the marks he made were
counting, numbers that existed outside of his head. The revelation, which had come to her last year in a muddled dream after
a day’s covert trailing of the priest, made the business seem at
once both more and less magical.

Even now, Kalameshli’s mind was at work. In between long
spaces of careful chewing, being an old man solicitous of his
teeth, he would murmur remarks to Akrit. Maniye caught mention of numbers, of beasts, of tribute, of the expected Horse
Society travellers, and how much salt they might have for trade,
or whether there were Coyote packmen nearby who would have
some to offer. In times like these, when his mind was solely on
the future of his people, she almost forgot how much she hated
him. Then his cold eyes would flick sideways towards her,
behind her father’s back, and they would harden like stones.