The Tiger and the Wolf (5 page)

The history of the Crown of the World was a chronicle of the
harsh land and brittle winters that either hardened the people
there like old leather or drove them out. Winter Runners, Cave
Dwellers, Shadow Eaters, Eyriemen, each had seized its chance
to rule the rest, risen to its prime, then fallen in turn. The Wolf
were strongest now, but the Crown of the World was a mutinous
kingdom. No tribe had ever mastered it for long.

In the Riverlands of the south they told a different story,
about building and growth. The Sun River Nation, that had
once been just an idea in the heads of a handful of River Lord
chieftains, had pushed its own borders steadily eastwards along
the banks of the Tsotec. All the other tribes had knelt before
them, not destroyed or exiled but consumed with the voracity of
the River Lords’ own gluttonous totem, to be made a part of the
body of the Sun River Nation that stretched out its length along
the river.

That part of the river that was the Nation’s heartland was
known as the head of the Tsotec, with the fragmented islands of
the estuary forming the teeth in her jaws. Above the falls that
framed the River Lords’ great city of Atahlan, where the river
turned northwards and began gathering in its tributaries, this
was the Tsotec’s back – rough and uneven and cutting into the
side of the Plains before her many tails split into the rivers and
lakes and thousand streams of the Crown of the World.

On the back of the Tsotec, heading from the endless summer
of the Riverlands north to where winter was already gathering,
moved three boats. Long and narrow, hide stretched around
wooden spars, they were sturdy enough to forge through the
current with the sweat of their oarsmen, light enough to be carried over rapids and past falls where need be, and held steady in
the water each by their single outrigger. These were the canoes
of the Horse Society, though they were seldom found heading
north into the teeth of the cold at this time of year. Most of their
brethren in the Crown of the World would already be ferrying
their rafts of timber back south, loaded with whatever goods and
raw materials they had been able to barter for. These three boats
did not carry traders, though, but passengers. Amidst the Horse
people were two men of the south: Asmander and Venater. The
one was an earth-dark River Lord youth with an easy smile, the
other a burly, villainous-looking estuary man, far from home.

‘The Horse people are saying bad things about you, because
you will not row,’ Asmander remarked. ‘They say you cannot
have been such a pirate as you tell them, if you will not set hand
to oar.’ He was bare-chested, beaded with sweat from his stint,
dashing himself with river water before pulling on his thin tunic.

Venater eyed him balefully. ‘I didn’t see you accomplishing
much.’
‘I did enough to assuage my honour.’ Their boat shifted as it
ground its keel in the shallows; some of the Horse Society
jumped out to steady it and haul it to land. Asmander let himself
over the side, plunging to his waist in water that was blessedly
cool after the long, hot journey north up the back of the Tsotec.
He put his shoulder to the vessel’s side with the assured joy of a
man who didn’t have to, and could stop doing so any time he
liked.
Venater crouched beside him, not even bothering to get out,
let alone putting his prodigious strength to any use. ‘Well, boy,
your father has my honour by the balls, and until he looses his
grip I’ll be pissed on before I do anything for mere honour.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Asmander was gritting his teeth at the
effort, but he was grinning around it. ‘And I can see that me
doing this work is eating you up: the soft young boy of the River
Lords callousing his hands! Unhead of! Plainly this world is
upside-down and mad.’ He was tall and lean, with the dark, dark
skin of all the River Lords, his hair cropped short save for a knot
of it gathered at the base of his skull. His features were a good
battleground for his customary expressions: amusement, mischief, high-born disdain. They had won him many hearts back
home – he was a man who could have been married three times
over, had he ever got round to returning any of his suitors’ sentiments. He was the blade of his family, though, and wielded
always – as now – to further the ambitions of his father. Dalliances and ready smiles were never allowed to turn into anything
more serious. Asmander carried responsibilities.
‘If those Horse girls didn’t make eyes at you so much, you’d
not care,’ Venater snarled. ‘Show off for them, all you like.’
‘They’re not my type.’ Asmander stepped back, clapping his
hands together at a job well done. All three Horse craft were
beached safely now on this foreign shore.
Three days before, they had left the northern edge of the Sun
River Nation behind, no matter how optimistically one drew the
maps. Since the river had taken them northwards, the land to
the west had soared steeply away, rising to the heights that were
the Stone Kingdoms. To the east lay the Plains, green where the
land met the river, but so much of it uncultivated, where in
the south there would be fields and irrigation canals to wring
the absolute most out of every hand’s breadth of soil. Here in
the drier lands the people were fierce and unfriendly, that much
was known. They held and tilled only the land around their
villages, because anything beyond that was simply setting out a
meal for raiders from other tribes. They fought each other incessantly, held no oaths sacred, followed gods who valued nothing
but blood, and ate each other’s children for preference. Or so it
was said amongst the River Lords.
Asmander knew full well that his own people’s gods were also
partial to their ration of blood. If Old Crocodile liked his sacrifices to be public and ritualized, that still left the offerings just as
dead as some heart-ripping festival of the Plains people. He was
a young man cynical beyond his years, who could smile at a
great many things that others held terribly solemn. He knew that
above all the gods and totems of the world there was one great
and controlling spirit, and it was named Expediency. Honour
was all very well – and something he valued deeply and pursued
incessantly – and yet he was sourly aware that if one refused
Expediency its necessary sacrifices, then the goodwill of every
other god, never mind all the honour in the world, would get
you nowhere.
At last Venater deigned to step ashore, getting no more than
his bare feet wet. He was a broad-shouldered creature, a man of
close on twice Asmander’s age. A skin the colour of wet sand
was scarred by innumerable fights, then scarred again by the
deliberate tallies of deeds his people kept, an intricate and secret
history of murder, raid and private brawl written in jagged weals
down the broad canvas of his upper arms. He wore his hair long
and unkempt, framing a lantern jaw, hollow eyes hard like flint,
a nose broken more than once.
One of the Horse Society passed them by as they stood on
the bank. ‘We must make a good showing for the Laughing
Men,’ he told them.
Looking at the Horse delegation, Asmander decided ‘a good
showing’ consisted of prominently displayed weapons.
‘Why are we even bothering?’ Venater growled. ‘Your father is
sending us off to die in the north, not at the hands of these
scum.’
‘He is not sending us to
die
anywhere,’ Asmander reproached.
‘And we bother because the Horse trade here, and they must
keep the locals happy. And, if we want to get any further north
than this place, we must do as we’re asked.’
The two of them were travelling light: easier to ship River
Nation coin than to clog the boat with everything they might
need. Both were warriors, though, and when the Laughing Men
came down to the riverbank, they found in the two southerners
as martial a display as they could ask for. Asmander had donned
a quilted tunic, with a plate of flat stone sewn into each pocket
to make it hard armour. A stone-toothed wooden sword – the
maccan
of the River People – dangled from a strap at one wrist,
and there were jade spurs at his ankles.
Venater was already wearing a coat of sharkskin, which made
him a fearsome opponent to grapple and an unpleasant figure to
sit next to in the close confines of a boat. Bracers of tortoiseshell
covered his forearms and the backs of his hands, and his weapon
was the
meret
, the blade-edged club of greenstone which he kept
thrust through the cord of his belt. His stance suggested that he
would be only too glad if the Horse diplomacy turned sour.
The locals – the Laughing Men – were already making themselves known, sloping down the riverbank with an insolent
disdain. They were all on four feet, and Asmander knew that
arriving Stepped to a first meeting was common amongst the
Plains people. It hid what weapons they might be carrying,
locked within those lean-flanked animal forms. He could see the
glint of bronze in their teeth, but there was no way to know if
they might suddenly leap into human form with arrows leaving
the string or spears taking to the air. Also, he had to admit, they
were an intimidating sight.
‘Pretty lot, aren’t they?’ Venater growled. Probably he was
wondering about fighting them. Fighting people was, to
Asmander’s certain knowledge, one of the few subjects that
really occupied the older man’s mind. Travelling with him was
like walking under a sky constantly about to storm: human mind
and beast soul united in perfect bloody-handed harmony.
These things are known: you list his good points
, Asmander told
himself, with a slight smile.
The shapes the Laughing Men took were not like lions, nor
like dogs, but some distant cousin of both, or neither. The largest
had shoulders that would rise to the hollow beneath Asmander’s
ribs, and the least of them would come up to his waist. They
were made oddly, forequarters broadly muscled, and front limbs
longer than the rear. A crest of hair ran down their spines and
their pelts were tawny and spotted with ragged patches of black.
Their heads were vulpine, heavy-jawed, with baleful dark eyes.
When they yawned, they showed a nest of dagger teeth that
would give even a River Lord pause. As they approached, one
or another would let out a weird cackle unpleasantly close to a
human laugh.
By standing there as they were, with all their weapons on
display, the Horse were signalling that they came without deceit.
Asmander wondered idly if that would work with these ferocious-looking creatures. There were few who lived along the
head of the Tsotec who had any kind words for the Plains tribes,
although perhaps that was just because the only examples that
came their way tended to be raiding parties.
For a moment, while the Horse stood firm, the Laughing
Men coursed around them, sniffing and heckling, thrusting their
noses at their visitors and baring their fangs in disconcerting
grins. Then they had drawn off a little, though still in a loose
crescent that penned their visitors against the water.
They Stepped lazily, almost seeming to stretch out into
human form as though waking from dreams of blood and carrion. There were more women amongst them than men,
Asmander saw, and certainly it was the women who had made
the larger beasts. They had the long limbs and spare frames of
the Plains people, and that skin like bright copper. The men had
heads shaved to the scalp, but the women just cut theirs at the
sides and sported coxcomb manes dyed in patterns of gold and
black and red. There was a lot of metal worn at necks and wrists
and ankles: copper, bronze and gold set into plates of bone and
horn.
Many of the women had armour of stiff cotton panels,
though the men wore no more than loincloths and cloaks of
hide. Long-headed spears and javelins were much in evidence,
and Asmander could sense Venater tensing, readying himself for
a fight much as another man’s mouth might fill with saliva at the
scent of food.
‘Are we not welcome?’ The Horse people’s Hetman, Eshmir,
spread her hands. She was the only one amongst the visitors not
armed at all. ‘Perhaps your Malikah may wish some talk with us
– or with these our guests?’
The leader of the Laughing Men, the oldest-looking of the
women there whose skin bore the memories of many fights,
nodded easily. They all smiled readily, these Plains people.
Everything seemed to amuse them, and no doubt killing these
new arrivals would just make them smile more. Asmander liked
that honesty about them.
‘Who are these, your guests?’ their leader asked.
The Hetman offered Asmander a small nod, letting him know
that the Laughing Men expected visitors to speak for themselves.
‘I am the First Son of Asman,’ he announced. ‘I am a Champion of the River Lords.’ He watched their faces to see if that
meant the same to them as it did to his own people, and was
satisfied to see that it did: enough widened eyes and thoughtful
glances there to know that they understood him. He looked to
Venater, who was scowling and plainly not about to play along,
leaving Asmander with the difficult job of introducing him.
He
would rather I humiliate him than he has to do it to himself.
‘This
man is Venater, sworn to my family.’ It was the kindest way to
say it, for all that he probably owed his companion no kindness.
Better than, ‘a notorious but ultimately failed pirate’, certainly.
‘A little trade, a little talk, gifts.’ The Hetman displayed her
open hands. ‘Friendship between the Laughing Men and the
Horse Society. Friendship between the Laughing Men and
the friends of the Horse.’
The woman who led these Laughing Men regarded them
haughtily for a moment, as though contemplating driving them
back into the river. Then she laughed, and the sound was just as
they had made when Stepped into their animal shapes – wild
and mad. ‘Come, then. The Malikah likes gifts, and her mates
like trade. Friends? We shall see.’

Dwellings of the Sun River Nation tended to be at least half
underground, digging into the cool earth to ward off the daily
height of the sun. The village of the Laughing Men, however,
was all in the earth, barely rising above the level of the ground.
Although their goat and cattle pens stood out, Asmander saw
little sign of an actual settlement until they were nearly upon it,
and he realized that the thirty or so raised mounds of dry grass
were actually roofs. They lived in pits, did the Laughing Men, a
scattering of holes in the ground, secluded and sheltered, with
no fear of flooding in this dry land. He thought it all looked
barren and primitive, but then the Plains life was not about
showing your wealth to the sky. When they had come to the
biggest hut, and descended the steps carved into the packed
earth, he found the area within was surprisingly spacious,
three-levelled and with the largest room being the deepest. The
day was ebbing, and at first Asmander was just stepping down
into darkness, twitchy with a sudden sense of danger. Up above
though, children were already letting down pots of flame, suspending them by ropes from the spars that supported the roof,
making an elaborate constellation that cast a thousand patterns
of light and shadow all about the curving walls. There were
paintings there, intricate and complex: human and animal figures, abstract designs, mountains and rivers. A hundred legends
had been sketched out and intermingled in bright colours
around the confines of the Malikah’s home.