Ratha’s Creature (The First Book of The Named) (23 page)

A sharp cuff flung her head to one side. She felt a muscle tear in her neck.

“Enough, Ratha.” Bonechewer panted.

Ratha took one step toward him, her eyes on Thistle-chaser. The wounded cub cowered, shaking, ugly black stains spreading across her shoulder and chest. Again a part of Ratha’s mind recoiled from the sight, but she forced that part away.

“Don’t try,” Bonechewer said. “You won’t earn your death that way.”

Ratha curled her lips back from her fangs as she watched Thistle-chaser.

“Do you really want her? She’s witless!” Her voice was thick with scorn.

“I want her. And the others,” Bonechewer said quietly. “You are right. They will never know themselves as you and I do. They will never share our gift of words. But they are mine and I will keep them, for I will have no others.” He lowered his head. “I will not mate again, Ratha.”

Her whiskers drooped as her rage fell, allowing her to see the terror in Thistle-chaser’s eyes. She sought her anger and used it to blur her sight. Soon enough, she knew, she would see all too clearly.

The cries of the other cubs drifted up the hill beneath the violet sky. The night wind touched Ratha’s fur. Thistle-chaser’s brothers were still at play. She turned to go downhill but Bonechewer blocked her way. “Stay away from them. I’m warning you.”

He raised one paw, claws extended. “I won’t kill you, but if you come near my cubs, you will leave blinded and limping.”

Ratha drew back, trembling. Now she had truly lost everything. Bonechewer would never accept her again, and there would only be fear and hatred in Thistle-chaser’s eyes. There was no returning along the trail she had chosen to take.

Again she fanned her anger into a blazing flame, burning away all regret or remorse.

“Take the cubs, Un-Named One,” she snarled. “Feed them well so they do not slay you and gorge themselves on your carcass. I go.”

She turned and trotted away, taking the path along the crest of the little hill above the marsh. The damp night wind brought her the many smells she had come to know. Never would she run here again.

She stopped and listened. Bonechewer was following her, making sure she was leaving his territory. Her anger failed her and despair seeped in. How she wanted to go to him, bury her head in his flank and beg his forgiveness, saying she would learn to love the cubs as they were, not as she wanted them to be.

He stopped at the edge of his territory. She ran on, leaving him behind. Her paws beat the ground as she galloped, filling her mind with the rhythm.

Now she was outcast to the Un-Named as well as the clan. All fangs would be bared against her wherever she went, for she would be known as a killer and a renegade. She ran, not looking or caring where she was going.

Behind her in the night a voice rose. Ratha tried to shut her ears to it, but the voice continued and grew louder. She stopped at a stream to drink and rinse the metallic taste of blood from her mouth. She ran on until at last Bonechewer’s farewell faded and died, leaving her alone with the night as her only companion. 

CHAPTER TWELVE

For the rest of the summer Ratha wandered, drifting across the land as if she were a leaf blown by a fitful wind. She often stood atop a sharp cliff, wondering whether to throw herself down, or lay in the dark of a cave, wishing starvation would take her quickly. But she always turned away from the cliff or dragged herself out of the cave to hunt. Something forced her to survive almost against her will.

Ratha lived each day, trying not to think about the past or the future. Her eyes were always fixed on her prey or searching for those who would prey on her. When she looked at her reflection in the ponds and streams where she drank, she could barely answer the gaze of that thin face looking at her from beneath the water. Her belly twisted when she saw how the bitterness showed like the fresh scars not yet hidden beneath new fur. One who saw her in the days when Thakur called her yearling would never know her now, she thought. She walked with her head low and her fur was dull and rough.

She meant her wandering to be aimless, but she knew she was drifting back toward clan land. Something was calling her home, and she answered, even though she knew there was no home. Only gray bones remained in the meadow where the three-horns used to run and old dens filled with moldy leaves.

Why she was drawn to the old clan holdings she didn’t know. There would be nothing waiting for her at the end of this trail. She often fought the pull, turning onto a new path each time her feet carried her toward the old. Many times before she had been able to leave worn trails behind and run on fresh paths, but this time she had no will or wish to challenge the new. She felt used up and worn out; as if the wounds Bonechewer had given her would never stop bleeding. Each day she cursed her body for living when the pain inside made her want to lie down and never rise again. The taste of Thistle-chaser’s blood clung inside her mouth no matter how much water she drank trying to rinse it away.

At last, on a hot day in midsummer, Ratha stood on a stream bank, looking across. The meadow beyond spread far in every direction, the grass high and thick. Charred spikes that had once been trees stood against the sky, their trunks washed with waving grass, the space between blackened branches empty of leaves. Insects droned about Ratha’s ears as she stood with the sun on her back, wondering whether to cross.

She turned and walked along the shaded stream bank, the mud cool beneath her feet. She emerged into an open patch and narrowed her eyes at the glitter of the sun on the water. A slight thinning of the grass on the far bank was all that marked the trail that had run across the stream and the meadow. Soon it would be entirely hidden.

Ratha remembered how she had run that trail, Fessran panting at her side as the clan-pack howled behind her Those howls still seemed to echo through the hot, still air. Her ears trembled. She started, swiveling her ears forward. It hadn’t all been memory. She had heard something, although it was faint and far away. She lifted her head and listened again, wondering if the sun on her head was making her dizzy. She looked across the meadow. No one was there, yet it seemed that the sound had come from that direction. Not howls of rage, but the echo of a high ringing cry she had heard before. She plunged into the tall grass and trotted toward the sound.

It was much further than she thought. The grass, un-cropped, grew higher than she could raise her nose with all four feet on the ground. She seemed to run forever in a lush green cage whose walls moved with her as she ran. Stalks whipped her flanks and broke beneath her feet.

She froze, one paw lifted, yet the swishing sound of grass brushing past legs continued briefly and stopped. Ratha sniffed, trying to catch a scent, but she could only smell the sugary juices of the crushed grass. Hair bristled on her nape. She waited. No one appeared. The air was quiet. The cry she heard before came again, muffled by the hot, still air. It was the imperious call of a dappleback stallion gathering his flock of mares. Dappleback! Ratha’s stomach rumbled. If she killed a mare, she could gorge herself, drag the rest up a tree and not have to hunt again for days. She bounded on through the grass, the ripe seed-heads lashing her back.

She slowed to a trot. Again she froze and the other sound that was not the stallion’s cry continued on for an instant. Ratha sat up on her hind legs, peering back over the grass. There. A circle of stalks behind her was still waving. Ratha dropped down again, whirled and faced the green curtain behind her. Again, no one appeared.

Disgruntled, she made her way forward again, no longer trotting but gliding quietly between the stems, leaving as little evidence of her passage as possible.

Her tracker was staying downwind of her so the slight breeze that fanned her face bore none of the intruder’s scent. The odor of dappleback was growing rich in her nostrils, making her wild with hunger. She could see them now, their backs brown and sweat-slicked above the wild wheat. Once she had tended and guarded such a herd. Now she was the raider and there was no one to defend this herd except the little stallion. Ratha crept close to the dapplebacks, crouched in the grass and picked out her quarry. An older mare, shaggy and ridgebacked. The little horse moved stiffly and lagged behind the others.

Ratha crawled, her belly to the ground, until she was sure that one short dash would bring down the prey. There was no sign of her shadower. Perhaps the intruder had gone or had never been there at all, an illusion made by capricious breezes playing through the grass.

Ratha gathered herself, tensed and sprang. A sharp yowl tore through the air behind her, almost before her paws left the ground. Nostrils flaring, the dapplebacks threw back their heads, wheeled and scattered. Ratha lost her prey in the confusion of bodies racing past her. She broke off her charge and veered away, retreating in the direction she had come.

She bounded high and saw the grass rippling as someone streaked toward her. The sunlight flashed on a dark copper coat and Ratha’s throat went tight with fear. Had Bonechewer tracked her here? Had Thistle-chaser died of her wounds and her father come to take revenge? Ratha clamped her teeth together and dove through the grass, ignoring the knife-edged leaves that lashed her face.

However fast she ran or however she dodged and turned, her pursuer was there before her, cutting off her escape. She used all the tricks she knew from her days of herding three-horns, yet she couldn’t shake this pursuer. Even Bonechewer wasn’t as quick or agile. Every time she turned, she heard the grass break and caught a glimpse of gleaming copper. Bewildered and dizzy, she stood still, hunching her shoulders. This time he was coming. As soon as he appeared, she would leap and sink her fangs into his throat....

The grass parted. Ratha sprang, tried to stop herself and tumbled. She scrambled to her feet, her tail creeping between her legs.

The face before her was Bonechewer’s but the eyes were green, not yellow. Both fangs stood intact in his lower jaw. As he lowered his head to peer at her, she saw the puckered scars on his neck. She remembered how Meoran had seized him and thrust him forward against the fury of the Red Tongue. The memory reflected back at her from his eyes with a quality of uncertainty, as if he could not yet believe who she was.

“I was ready to track and slay a raider,” Thakur said. “Instead I find you.”

Ratha waited.

“And I have found a raider.” Thakur’s voice became hard. “You didn’t come here just to watch the herd. Do you run with the Un-Named ones who still prey on my beasts? Were you among those I chased away last night?”

“I came to kill,” Ratha answered, “but I run with no one except myself.”

“My teeth seek a raider’s throat,” Thakur growled, lashing his tail against the grass. “Our animals are few and scrawny, yet still the Un-Named Ones prey. I would rip you open and hang you from a tree to tell them to seek other hunting grounds.”

Ratha drew back her whiskers and gave him a bitter grin. “You would better please Meoran rather than the Un-Named if you hung my pelt from a tree. It would be more useful there than where it is now.”

“Run, then,” Thakur snarled at her. “I will do Meoran no service.” He paused. “You look too much like her, yet you cannot be. You have the eyes of a hunter, not of the cub I taught.”

“Then, if I am not Ratha, kill me,” she said, looking at him steadily.

Thakur flattened his ears and bared his teeth as he approached. She smelled the sweat on his coat and his breath, heavy and acrid. He stopped, panting. He hung his head.

“Thakur, I am Ratha,” she said.

“Then you know where I got these wounds on my neck,” he said between his teeth. “They took too long to heal. There is another wound, not made by Meoran’s fangs.”

Ratha glared back at him. “Whose voice lifted above the clan yowling that night? Whose voice told them that my creature could be killed? Had you not spoken, Thakur, the clan would have listened to me, not Meoran!”

“I told you then it was not hatred that made me speak.”

“Why?” Ratha cried, searching his eyes.

“I saw too many throats bared to the Red Tongue,” Thakur said softly.

“And was that worse than throats bared to Meoran?” Ratha demanded.

“Meoran may be stupid and cruel, but he is of our kind. His power is the power of teeth and claws and that we understand even as we fear it. The Red Tongue’s power we fear because we do not understand it. It is a fear that makes the strongest among us into crying cubs. Except for you, Ratha.”

He stared at her long and hard.

“You thought I would use the Red Tongue’s power to rule the clan? No! I wanted only to share my creature, to teach my people how to use it and care for it. Meoran was blind not to see.”

“He was not blind,” Thakur answered. “He saw what I saw, throats bared to the one who carried the Red Tongue. You would have ruled whether or not you chose.”

Ratha’s ears drooped in dismay as Thakur continued. “I did not want that for my people, or for you either.”

“So that is why you spoke,” Ratha said.

“It was not the Red Tongue’s touch on my fur that I feared the most, Ratha. Meoran thinks that is why I spoke, but the truth is what I have told you. Do you believe me?”

Ratha looked down at her toes. “Does it matter whether or not I believe you? The Red Tongue is gone and the people we once called ours have been slain by the Un-Named.”

“Not all of them,” Thakur said. “The beasts I guard are not only mine.”

Ratha’s eyes widened. “The clan still lives? Where? How many?”

“Fewer than I have claws on all my feet. As to where, I can’t tell you yet.”

Ratha looked up at him, long-dead hopes starting to rise again.

“Yearling,” Thakur said softly, startling her by using the old name, “I know you have run a long and bitter trail. I also know I helped set you on it. I am not sorry for what happened, for I had no other choice, but I wish I was not the cause of the pain I see behind your eyes.”

Before she could speak again, the sharp yowl of a herder’s call sounded over the meadow. Thakur sat up on his hind legs and peered through the grass.