Ratha’s Creature (The First Book of The Named) (28 page)

The Un-Named began to fall back. Slowly they gave way. They fought only to save themselves, and no longer tried to break through the herder’s circle to attack the milling herdbeasts. The mass of the enemy began to thin and Ratha saw more moonlit forms streak away into the trees.

She drove her torch into the ground beside a stiffening body and let out a mocking yowl. “They run!” she cried. “They are as cubs before the power of the Red Tongue. Let them taste it once again before the forest shelters them. To me, my people!”

The enemy’s ranks wavered and broke. The herders bore down on them and many cried their death scream before they reached the forest.

And then, all at once, it was over and the night fell quiet except for the soft screams of the wounded and dying.

Ratha stood with the torch guttering in her mouth, staring across the emptied meadow. Her heart gradually stopped its pounding. She had won. After such a beating as they had taken tonight, the Un-Named would not come again. The little flock of herdbeasts would grow large and cubs would play in the high grass, well-fed and free of fear.

She plodded back across the meadow, her feet dragging from weariness. Now there was no need to run fast. When she reached the bonfire, Fessran took the burning stick from her jaws and returned it to the flames. Others followed in Ratha’s wake and gave their brands back to Fessran. There was one more thing to be done and for that they needed their jaws free.

Among the Un-Named dead were the wounded, writhing in pain or trying to drag their shattered bodies from the meadow. Ratha watched her people walk among them. The herders vented their still-smoldering anger on the bleeding ones, clawing and slashing at them until they were torn lumps of flesh in which the breath trembled one last time and left. Ratha watched grimly. She had not given the order to mutilate the wounded, but she had not forbidden it either. She remembered how the raiders had eaten from Srass while he still lived. She watched, but took no part for the taste of blood mixed with the bitterness of charred bark was still thick in her mouth.

“Giver of the New Law,” a voice said, and she looked up into Thakur’s eyes. They were lit not by the firebrand, but by the faint glow of dawn over the forest.

“I am weary,” she said crossly. “If you wish to show me more of the change in my people, you will wait until I have slept.”

“It is not your people I wish to show you,” Thakur answered.

Ratha’s eyes narrowed. “One of the Un-Named?”
 

“One of the wounded raiders. He lives. He asks for you. He knows your name.”

She felt a sudden chill in her belly. It spread along her back, down the insides of her legs. Only one among the raiders knew her by her name. She had thought he was far away and safe on his own land.

“Lead me to where he lies,” she said roughly.

Thakur took her to the edge of the forest, to the long faint shadow of a small pine standing apart from the rest. The shadow grew darker and the grass lighter as the sky turned from violet to rose and then to gold. Two herders sat together, eyeing the wounded raider who lay beneath the pine. At her approach they uncurled their tails from about their feet and bared their fangs at the raider.

“No,” Ratha said sharply. “There will be no killing until I command it.”

She and Thakur approached the Un-Named one. A muscle jerked beneath the red-smeared copper pelt. Ratha heard a voice, hoarse and weak.

“Does she come, brother? I grow too weary to lift my head.”

“She comes,” Thakur answered and Ratha felt him nudge her ahead while he stayed behind. She stepped into the coolness beneath the trees. The raider’s muzzle pulled back scorched and swollen lips in a mocking grin. There was the broken lower fang.

“Come here, Ratha,” Bonechewer said, bloody froth dribbling from his mouth.” “Let me see the one who now leads the clan. Ah, yes,” he said as she neared him. ”You have grown strong and fierce. You will be a better leader than Meoran. What a fool he was to drive you out! What a fool!”

Ratha nearly pounced on him. She jumped and landed with her forepaws almost touching his face. She glared down at him. “Why did you come? Why?”

“To see you,” he answered, gazing up at her. “Perhaps to die at your fangs.”

“Bonechewer, stop mocking me, or I swear by the Red Tongue, you will have your wish! You told me you would no longer run with the Un-Named. Did your land yield too little to feed you this season?”

“No.” He coughed and his chest heaved. Ratha could see why the blood seeped from his mouth. The lower part of his chest was crushed and caved in. Blood welled there too and the flat, jagged end of a broken bone showed in the wound.

“I’m a mess, aren’t I, clan cat? That’s what I get for leading a pack of cowards. They fought me to escape the Red Tongue and when I went down, they trampled me.” He grinned again, grimacing with pain. “Then your herders came along and played with me for a while. Not the death I would have chosen.”

“Why did you come?” Ratha’s voice grew soft and trembled, despite her wish to hate him.

“After I drove you away and the cubs left, there was nothing to hold me to my land. When the Un-Named came through again, I went with them.”

“The cubs left?”

“Yes. You were right about them. I could not believe I fathered such a litter. I could scarcely keep them from each other’s throats or from mine either. They are out there, the savage little killers.”

“Did Thistle-chaser live?”

“Yes, she lives, half-mad as she is. You may see her in the packs if the Un-Named are foolish enough to venture here again.” He coughed and shuddered. “I have seen you again, Ratha. That is all I dared ask for and all I wish.”

“Is that all you want from me, Bonechewer?” she asked, trying to suppress the sudden grief that welled up inside her.

“If your fangs would help me toward the dark trail, I would not resent it,” he answered. “Or if you cannot kill me, tell another to do it.”

Ratha swallowed, barely able to speak. She looked toward Thakur. He rose and came toward Bonechewer. Her flank brushed his as the two passed.

“Away, herders!” she cried at the two still sitting and staring. “There is no need for you here.” They whirled about and dashed away. She followed at a trot then slowed to a walk, watching her people dragging the Un-Named corpses into the dirt clearing where the fire burned. Fessran and the others who helped her were piling fuel on the flames, making them bright and hot, eager to consume the bodies. At the other end of the meadow, the dapplebacks grazed peacefully, showing no sign of the night’s terrors. Ratha let her eyes rest on that scene and turned her back on the fire.

Grass rustled behind her and a familiar smell was with her. Not until Thakur was beside her did she turn her head.

“I held my brother’s throat until he was still,” he said softly.

“Did he say anything more?”

“Only that clan leaders are not forbidden to grieve.”

Ratha’s jaw dropped. “That arrogant mangy son of a scavenger! He thought I would cry for him? He thought ... I would ... cry ... for....” Her voice broke into a keening wail as her sorrow escaped at last. She stamped, lashed her tail and flung her head back and forth. All the rage, hate and sorrow she had felt and kept hidden now took her and shook her until she was left panting and exhausted. She stumbled to Thakur and laid her head against his chest. “I am even more a fool,” she muttered, her sides still heaving. “A clan leader should not bawl like a cub.”

“No one was watching,” Thakur chided gently.

At last she lifted her head and gazed across the meadow. There the dapplebacks grazed, with the herders around them. Soon there would be three-horns and other kinds of beasts, for Thakur and others in the group were good at catching and taming them.

My people will survive,
Ratha thought.
They have changed, even as I have, but they will survive. That is what matters.

“I left my brother under the pine,” Thakur said. “Is that what you wished?”

“It is. His bones shall lie there and those who pass shall honor them.” Ratha drew a breath. “Once I hated him. Now there is nothing left to hate. He was my mate, Thakur, with everything that it meant. I will not soon forget him.”

“Nor I, Ratha.”

She turned to Thakur, to the green-eyed face that echoed the one whose amber eyes were closed in death. No. He was not Bonechewer, and he too evoked memories that, if anything, were more painful. She would take no mate until the raw memories were soothed and healed by time. But, she sensed, he would be a wise and comforting friend and would run beside her on the rough new trail that lay ahead of her and her people.

It would not be an easy path, and the dangers that lay there might be beyond her capability to face. Yet ragged and weary as she was, she lifted her muzzle in voiceless challenge to those things still unknown.

She was Ratha, she-cub, herder of three-horns, tamer of the Red Tongue and leader of her people.

Whatever came, she would meet it with all the strength and wit she could command. One thing she knew; as long as she and the Red Tongue lived, her people would survive.

Triumph overcame her weariness. She lifted her tail and trotted after Thakur as he walked across the meadow toward the rising sun.