Clan Ground (The Second Book of the Named) (26 page)

“Good. He has begun to show his loyalty. Hold him. We will need him to guide us to the renegade Firekeeper Bira and the treelings.”

He turned, fixing his eyes on Ratha, filling her with an icy fear that she could not overcome with anger. He began to pace toward her, seeming to grow with each step.

The Firekeepers that held Ratha drew back, leaving her alone facing him.

“You are worthy of my fangs, clan leader,” he said softly. “You know I can’t leave you alive. If you lie still, I will be quick.”

Ratha dodged his first strike. They circled each other, ears flat, tails lashing. She forced her trembling legs to tighten for a spring and she leaped onto his back, driving her teeth into the side of his neck. He shuddered, but did not fall, even as she threw her weight out to drag him off balance. His blood welled into her mouth, but she knew her strike was not a killing wound.

He shook her to the side and rolled on her, but she kept her jaws locked, despite his crushing weight. Her teeth sank deeper, and she flung her forelegs around his neck, adding their pull to the strength of her straining jaws. He wrenched his head back and forth, but he could not break free, and she thought for an instant that she might be able to keep her hold until loss of blood weakened him.

He shoved a paw between her chest and his and began to pry her away. She could not sustain her grip against his powerful forelegs. She twisted her head, trying to bite deeper, but her teeth tore from the wound. The great pressure of his massive paw against her chest threatened to crush her ribs, and she drew short painful breaths.

She lost her hold and he forced her to the cave floor, one paw on her neck, the other on her chest. She writhed and wriggled, but only exhausted herself.

Above her, his teeth gleamed and his eyes burned. His jaw dropped far down, exposing the full and terrible length of his fangs. He lowered his head, and she felt the hard curve against the pulsing of her throat. His claws drove into her to hold her still as he reared his head back for the killing downslash.

“Ratha!” The scream filled the cave. From the corner of her eye, she saw the circle of herders give way as someone burst through. She grunted at the sudden impact of a body hurtling on top of her own and felt scrabbling claws as Fessran’s smell washed over her.

Ratha caught a glimpse of Shongshar’s fangs driving down toward her; then Fessran heaved and jerked. She felt the shock as Shongshar struck and heard the shriek of teeth against bone. She wrenched herself out from beneath them as a dismayed hiss welled up from those watching.

In her blurred sight, Shongshar lifted his reddened fangs from the body of the Firekeeper who had once been her friend.

“I bare my throat to you again, Ratha,” Fessran whispered, rolling her head to look up at her. “Forgive my foolishness.”

A sudden commotion broke out near the fire. One of the Firekeepers guarding Thakur recoiled from his slash. Using the moment of confusion to break free, he streaked across the cave floor to Ratha.

“Run!” he cried. She gave Fessran one last, despairing look and plunged after Thakur as he passed her. They dashed out of the cavern, down the gallery, and were out in the sunlight before roars and howls broke from the cave behind them.

Thakur rushed to the stream that spilled from the base of the falls, leaping from rock to rock until he was nearly lost in the spray. She followed, fighting to keep her footing on slick stones. He ran downstream and leaped onto the bole of a tree that leaned out from the steep slope rising before them. She sprang up behind him and together they bounded through the brush until they reached the crest of the hill.

“That should confuse them,” Thakur panted, looking back. “They’ll think we took the trail.”

Ratha was too numb to hear his words. She still seemed to feel the shock and shudder as Fessran took the strike meant for her. Softly she moaned her friend’s name aloud.

“Ratha,” Thakur said. “Ratha, there’s no hope for her. Even if he hasn’t killed her, she will die soon. Those fangs went deep.”

“I should go back and take my revenge on him. I should fight for my place as clan leader,” she hissed, rage and despair choking her throat.

“And there will be another of the Named to lie bleeding on the floor in the Red Tongue’s den. Without you, neither Bira nor I have any hope. The time is past when you can listen to anger,” he said, and Ratha knew he was right.

The sound of angry calls below sent them running up the slope of the next hill.

“Soon the Firekeepers will find our track,” said Thakur. “We should split up and draw them away from where Bira and the treelings are hiding.”

“I’ll draw them. You circle back, find Bira and tell her what has happened. Don’t worry,” she said, at his doubtful look. “I won’t try to turn and fight them. I’ll meet you at the little cave by the stream.”

“All right.” He flicked his tail and trotted uphill. After he was gone, she went back along his path, smearing out his pugmarks and covering his smell with hers. Satisfied that she had concealed his trail, she glanced at the sun and galloped down the slope, away from the cries that told her that Shongshar and the Firekeepers had found her tracks.

Chapter Seventeen

Resting briefly, Ratha leaned on a dew-dampened rock, laying her cheek against its coolness. She heard the Firekeepers crashing through brush and dead leaves. She could see the approaching flicker of their firebrands through the trees and sensed that once again they were picking up her trail. A shiver that was half fear and half excitement ran through her.

She was glad, however, that the Firekeepers had chosen to track her by torchlight. A scent trail, which they might have followed easily in the damp night air, became difficult and elusive in the smoky haze from the torches. No. Shongshar knew better than to think he would catch her this way. He had brought out the torchbearers to show the Red Tongue’s wrath and let her own fear drive her like a renegade from clan ground.

She grinned bitterly as she ran across a patch of hair-ferns that made no rustle to give her away. She had already seen the worst that the fire-creature could do. It could burn flesh and bone and even forest, but it could also possess the minds and twist the wills of her people as if they were pieces of bark glowing and curling in the heart of the flame.

The sky above the treetops showed deep violet and the glittering stars were dimming. Ratha realized, looking up, that she had been leading the Firekeepers astray all night. Thakur would have had plenty of time to reach Bira. It was time to put an end to this cub’s play before daylight gave the searchers additional advantage.

She crept away a little farther and listened. Again they had come to a halt and were casting about for signs of her. She spat quietly to herself, disgusted with the noise they were making, and then slipped away through the underbrush.

She kept to the edge of clan ground to avoid being seen by accident. To conceal her trail, she frequently backtracked, waded in streams and rolled in the dung of other animals to disguise her smell.

The sun was just showing over the treetops when she reached the sandy path that led beneath the overhang to the cave where she, Bira, Thakur and the treelings had spent the previous night. She had a bad moment when she discovered that particular hollow empty. She was nervously searching the other caves when the sound of Thakur’s voice came from the shadows beneath the overhang.

“Over here,” he said. “We’ve moved our hiding place.” Her relief made her nearly collapse on the sand, but she only lolled her tongue out and padded after him.

Thakur led her farther upstream, to a smaller fall where the water cascaded down onto split stones that turned it into many tumbling rivulets. Ratha turned for a moment to watch the morning light dance and run down the falling water. Then she glimpsed Thakur’s tail disappearing between two slabs of rock that leaned against each other.

She followed him, reluctant to leave the cheerful morning and go into the dimness of a cave. When she was inside, however, she found the tilted stone floor dappled with sunlight and shadow and felt a breeze that carried the fresh smell and sound of the little fall. It was sufficient shelter to keep anyone who hid within from being seen, yet it was open enough not to feel confining.

Bira lay in a sun-washed hollow with the treelings gathered around her and on top of her. Ratha looked for Ratharee and saw the young one’s black eyes gleam as Ratharee spotted her. With a squeal of joy, the treeling scampered up the sloping rock and launched herself at her companion.

“Ooof. She’s getting heavy, Thakur,” Ratha groaned, but she couldn’t quite make her voice sound convincingly plaintive. Once the treeling had taken her usual place on Ratha’s shoulder with her tail curled around her neck, Ratha stretched out in a pool of sun near Thakur and Bira.

For a while, they lay there, quietly relaxed, and Ratha felt herself drifting into a light doze. Then Thakur sat up, with Aree perched on his shoulder, and said, “We must talk.”

Ratha yawned and shook away her drowsiness. “Does Bira know what happened last night?”

“Yes, Thakur told me,” Bira answered. “I’m not surprised that the herders deserted you. Shongshar seems able to persuade anyone to do anything.”

“There were some things I should have said,” Ratha growled, laying her head on her paws and feeling the helplessness and rage sweep over her again. “I should have told them that his talk about the Named ruling beyond clan ground was a mad cub’s dream. I should have torn apart the herder who brought Shongshar the kindling. And I should have known that trying to kill the Red Tongue by starving it was exactly what Shongshar wanted me to do.”

“Extending his rule may not be a mad cub’s dream for him,” said Thakur thoughtfully. “If he can make the Firekeepers fierce and arrogant, they can hold more territory and the herders can graze more animals. This may be difficult to face, but we have to admit that Shongshar has offered the Named a way not only to survive, but to flourish.”

“
Ptahh!
They will be meat for his belly.” Ratha spat. “They will grovel before the fire-creature in the cave and forget they once had wills of their own.”

“Many of our people would rather follow the commands of a voice stronger than their own, even if it is cruel and harsh. We of the Named have a strange hate and an even stranger love for those who are powerful,” Thakur said softly and added, “as you found when you first brought us this creature we call the Red Tongue.”

Ratha sighed. “If I had known then what my creature would become to them, I never would have—” She caught herself. “No. Once it was done, there was no way I could go back.”

“And we can’t go back now. Shongshar holds the minds of our people just as surely as he holds the Red Tongue.”

“He is only one and one can die,” she snarled fiercely, making Ratharee start in alarm.

Thakur looked sadly back at her as she soothed her tree-ling. “That is not the answer, Ratha. Even if you succeeded in killing him, others would carry on his ideas. To regain your place as clan leader, you would have to destroy the cave and everything in it. I do not know how that could be done with only you, Bira and me.”

“Are you going to give up and leave our people to become meat in Shongshar’s jaws?” Angry indignation swept over her.

“Listen to me. Whatever prompted the choice of our people, they have made it. If you take Shongshar from them now, you will only earn your own death. Later, when his ways have made him hated, you may have a chance. You must wait and watch.”

Bira shifted herself as a young treeling climbed down from her and went to its mother, who started to groom it. “I don’t think we can stay here,” she said. “We are still on clan ground and, although this place is hidden, Shongshar will eventually find it.”

“I agree,” said Thakur. “We must leave clan territory and live somewhere else for a while. There is a place I often go when I leave during the mating season. It isn’t that far, and it has fruit trees, which will feed the treelings.”

Reluctantly Ratha agreed with him. Her first thought had been to make this place their temporary home and use it to launch forays against the Firekeepers or try to undermine Shongshar’s support among the herders. But she had to admit that Thakur was right. There wasn’t much that their small group could do with the rest of the clan against them. It was time now to think not of revenge but of survival.

“How will we live without the herdbeasts and the Red Tongue?” asked Bira fearfully.

“There are other animals that we can eat,” Thakur answered.

“But there are no herders to cull them for us or to keep them from running away.” Bira turned her worried face to him.

“You can take them yourself. Haven’t you ever stalked grasshoppers?”

“Yes, but that was a long time ago.” The young Firekeeper cocked her head at him. “You mean, you can catch other animals that way? I never thought of that. I’m so used to eating from the clan kills.”

Ratha quelled the scorn that started rising inside her at Bira’s words. Once she too had been just as alarmed at the prospect of life outside the clan. She had been equally helpless until an Un-Named male taught her how to hunt and provide for herself. Hunger had made her an eager student, and she never forgot those lessons with Bonechewer, even though the thought of him still brought pain.