Ratha’s Creature

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.

“Cherfan’s helping me,” he said as he dropped down. “He’s wondering where I am.”

“Cherfan?” Ratha asked. “The greedy one who always ate before I did? He survived?”

Thakur looked amused. “You would remember that. He became a good herder, although he was late in learning. He fought beside me in the raids and he has fathered the two new cubs we have in our little group.” He paused, watching Ratha’s face darken. “What is it, yearling?”

She glanced at him, aware she had betrayed herself. “Something I will tell you later. Go now, if you don’t want Cherfan to find me.”

“Wait here,” Thakur said. A moment later he was gone, leaving only swaying grass to mark where he had been.

Ratha waited. Far above her a bird looped and dipped. Insects chirped monotonously and droned back and forth overhead, making her feel sleepy. The light slanted between the grass stems and a late afternoon breeze rustled the leaves. A worried tittle voice inside Ratha’s head kept asking her why she trusted Thakur. He could easily bring Meoran or a hate-filled pack that would fall upon her and tear her to pieces. Or he could circle behind her and attack her through the grass curtain, she thought, feeling very vulnerable. He trusts me to wait for him and not run away, even though I could. I think he is asking me what I choose.

She lifted her muzzle, hearing him coming through the grass. He poked his head out, saw her and looked pleased. “Good, you stayed. I told Cherfan I chased the raider away. He’s looking after the dapplebacks. I told him I was going to make sure the raider is gone.” He grinned at her. “Is the raider gone, Ratha?”

She looked back at him, feeling very empty. “I could give you a better answer if I could fill my belly.”

“There will be meat tonight,” Thakur said. “Not much, for our kills have to last many days.”

Ratha sat up. “The raider isn’t gone,” she teased, feeling some of her old spirit coming back. “The raider is Thakur. It will be good to eat from Meoran’s herd. Bring me a good piece, Thakur. Steal the liver if no one else has eaten it. I’ll wait for you by the stream.”

“No, yearling. What you want, you may take yourself. I want you to come back with me.”

“Come back to the clan?” Ratha was aghast. “If Meoran is there, he’ll rip me in half!”

“He is there, but I have reason to believe he will keep his claws sheathed. If you keep your mouth shut,” Thakur added meaningfully and continued, “You speak of us as the clan, but we are only the remains of it; scarcely enough to fill a well-dug lair. The Un-Named took many lives, Ratha.”

She swallowed. She was not yet ready to tell him that she had been there and watched her people die.

“Every one that remains is precious to us,” Thakur said. “Meoran knows that now.”

Ratha only wrinkled her nose. Thakur saw it and said, “You will find him much changed. Even I, who bear the scars of his teeth on my neck, can say that about him. It was he who saved those of us who did survive.”

“It was he whose stupidity gave you to the jaws of the Un-Named,” Ratha spat back.

“Yes. That too, he knows,” said Thakur. “It is bitter meat to him.”

“And you still keep him as leader? Ptah!”

“What has died is dead, Ratha. He is strong. We need his strength. We need yours as well. Come back to us.”

She looked at him, seeing in his eyes what he had not been able to say. It has been lonely without you, Ratha. Come back... come back to me.

She lowered her head, seeing too much of Bonechewer in the face before her. Could she put the bitterness behind? Here, again, was a new trail before her, one she never hoped she’d find. She thought she had nothing left to give anyone, but now....

“You say there are new cubs,” she said slowly. “How old are they?”

“Old enough to train as herders, but I haven’t had time to teach them.”

He looked at Ratha and she could see the hope rising in his face.

“It will be hard for me to see cubs again, knowing they are someone else’s.”

As Ratha watched him, she knew she had betrayed herself. Before she finished speaking, she wished that she could bite off her treacherous tongue and be mute for the rest of her days.

Thakur spoke. “I am wrong to call you ‘yearling.’ I see that you have grown older. You have been gone from us long enough to have birthed a family.”

“To have birthed them and lost them.”

He looked at her keenly. “I see that you have ended a trail. One too painful to set foot upon even in memory. I will not ask what happened.”

“When I can, I’ll tell you, Thakur,” she said, and she was thankful it had been he who found her in the meadow. “If I help you with the herding, will you have enough time to teach?”

His eyes brightened. He raised his head and yowled at the sky. “Arrowoo!”

“Thakur! You’ll bring the others!”

“I don’t care. Now they can see you.”

Ratha swallowed again. His happiness was starting to infect her, and she wanted to let it in, but she was still afraid.

“Are you sure Meoran will listen?” she asked.

“If he has any wits at all, he will,” Thakur said. “Just don’t say anything to anger him.”

He turned and pranced away through the grass, his tail high. Ratha followed.

Ratha climbed over water-smoothed stone, the sound of the stream below beating in her ears. Or perhaps it was her own heartbeat she heard, seeming to echo back and forth between the rocks. She looked up at the cliff face overhead, painted in streaks by the sun’s last rays. In seasons past, when she was a cub, the stream had run much higher, undercutting the cliff, sculpturing and polishing the rock that now lay far above its banks.

Thakur’s tail disappeared around a worn boulder and she hurried to catch up. She could smell the odor of a well-aged kill.

She emerged to find him standing on a sloping gray table of rock looking up into a water-carved cavern. There were shapes in the cave, and they stirred as she approached behind Thakur. Eyes fixed on her. The meat smell came from the rear of the cavern. At the front, a husky dun-colored male stood over a fragile-looking female and her two spotted cubs. The dun coat came forward as the female nudged the cubs further into the cavern.

“Hold, Thakur,” he said. “Who is that one with you?” As he finished, Ratha caught a flurry of motion inside the cavern. A face appeared between two seated forms. The dazed eyes grew wide with joy and the ears pricked up. It was Fessran. Ratha saw her give a wary glance to one side, calm herself and begin sidling toward the entrance.

“Come smell her and tell me yourself, Cherfan,” Thakur answered, nosing Ratha ahead of him. She approached Cherfan. Another movement brought her eyes back to the cavern and the large gray-coat standing beneath the center of the arch. Ratha froze. Cherfan looked back over his shoulder.

“I can tell you who she is,” said a harsh voice, and amber eyes were fixed on Ratha. “Cherfan, stay back.” The dun coat obeyed and retreated. Meoran turned to Thakur. “You know I have little patience with you these days, herder, yet you dare to push me further. Where did you find her and why do you bring her?” He sat, waiting for Thakur’s answer.

“I found her in the high grass of the meadow. I thought she was a raider stalking our dapplebacks.”

“Then do with her what is done to raiders,” Meoran snapped.

“Wait, Meoran,” Thakur’s voice was stronger and louder, rising above the muted roar of the stream below.

“Hear me. She has not returned to us as an enemy even though you stripped her of her name and made her outcast. She wants to join again with her people.”

Meoran curled back his lips, showing fangs like tusks.

“She wants to come back. Accept her. We of the Named are so few that to cast one aside is foolish. Once you would not have listened to words such as these, but I know you have changed.”

“So it is your new knowledge of me that makes you bring her drooling to my den.” Meoran sneered. “I would use that knowledge in a wiser way, herder.”

Ratha swallowed and tried to hide her hunger. Thakur’s front claws scraped on stone.

“I hear your words, Thakur,” Meoran answered at last. “The wisdom I have learned from the Un-Named makes me admit what you say is true. Every one of our people we can gather in will help us to survive.”

“Then may we accept her?” Thakur’s eyes were bright, eager. He leaned forward.

“Hold, herder,” Meoran growled, narrowing his eyes to amber slits. “There are more things to say.”

Thakur lowered his muzzle, slightly abashed.

“You, Ratha, stand before me.”

Slowly Ratha walked toward Meoran. The gray-coat seemed as massive as the stone he sat on. Cherfan and his mate came and stood beside him. More survivors from the broken clan peered out from behind him. They were sons and daughters of clanfolk Ratha had known. Here was a young male with the crooked tail of Srass, the grizzled herder. Of the older clan members, the only one that remained was Meoran. He sat upright beside Cherfan, towering over the young father.

Thakur had told her on the trail that Meoran’s rule was no less harsh than before, yet the harshness now was of necessity, not the petty tyranny it had been. His errors had cost him all of his sons and nearly all of his people; knowledge was imprinted as deeply on him as the gashes that Un-Named claws had made across his face. Cherfan looked at him as a son might look at a father and Ratha sensed he had earned that devotion.

The amber slits opened suddenly. “I do not forget the night when a cub carried the Red Tongue among us. And I see by your eyes that you have not forgotten either.”

“It is gone, Meoran,” Ratha answered. “It perished in the creek. By my foolishness.”

“And not by the claws of the herder Fessran, as I was told.” Meoran turned his head. Ratha followed his gaze to Fessran, crouching nervously in the shadow near the inside cavern wall. Meoran eyed her and yawned, showing the back of his tongue and all his teeth. “Sit up, herder, and don’t cower like a cub. Ratha’s tracks betrayed her. After I spared you I went back and saw where she slid and fell into the stream.”

Fessran shot Ratha a fierce glance that stabbed her with joy and fear.

Meoran grinned. “Did it amuse you to think you fooled me? I spared you, Fessran, because I needed you. With the Red Tongue gone and the she-cub driven out, you were no threat to me. So you lived.” He turned to Ratha. “So you wish to return. To be a herder once again. To eat at the clan kill and obey clan law.”

“Yes, Meoran.” Ratha looked down at her paws.

“You ask me to forget the night you and your creature shamed me before my people. That is asking much.”

Ratha lifted her head and stared into the glowing orange eyes as she had stared into the heart of the Red Tongue. “Most of those who remember that night are dead now,” she said softly. Everyone was still, listening. “There is no shame left in dead memories, Meoran. Now it is only between you and me.”

“Ratha, be careful!” hissed Thakur behind her.

“Quiet, herder!” Meoran roared, startling everyone. In the rear of the cavern, a cub began to wail. “You come to me asking to share my meat and my den, yet you speak to me as an equal,” Meoran said to Ratha.

“What I ask is to serve again as a herder and work for my meat.” She felt her whiskers bristling. “I will obey clan law.”

“Obeying clan law means obeying me,” Meoran said in his deep voice. “That you must do without question.”

“I will obey.” Ratha clamped her teeth together, feeling her hatred build again.

“Look at me as you speak and let me see what your words really mean.”

Ratha brought her gaze up to his.

The orange eyes semed to blaze out and devour her. She fought back, quietly, deep inside, hoping he couldn’t see.

After a long moment, he looked away.

“You will obey me in words, perhaps, and in deeds, but not in heart. Every time I look at you, I will see challenge in your eyes.”

“No!” Ratha cried miserably, knowing he saw what she could not hide. She would never forget that he too had bowed his great head before the power of the Red Tongue.

“Listen, you who were once of the clan,” he said to those assembled around him. “I will hear other words. Shall she come back among us?”

“Shall we invite a tick into our fur? Or maggots into our meat,” cried the young male with Srass’s tail and ears.

“Yet, she is young and strong and could bear cubs,” Cherfan argued, turning to Meoran. Mutterings grew and spread. Ratha listened and heard with dismay that most were against her. Fessran got up from her crouch against the wall and came toward Ratha. Her joy at seeing Ratha again was so obvious she could not hide it, and it was no further risk of Meoran’s wrath to run to Ratha’s side and welcome her openly.

Fessran sat close beside her and she felt her warmth and her fast breathing.

“Meoran!” Thakur cried. “Hate begets hate. Let old trails be covered with grass. If you turn her away, you will regret it. I need another herder. Cherfan’s cubs need a teacher. The Un-Named are enemy enough. Why make another?”

Meoran raised his paw and pointed at Ratha. “The hate is not mine. She chooses the trail she will run. Look at her!”

Ratha stood, quivering, trying to quench the rage boiling inside her, trying to be the humble herder she was asking him to believe she was. She knew that the voice that had so often lied for once spoke truth.

It was something in her, something that burned deeper than the Red Tongue. It was something she did not want, for it betrayed all her wishes; all her hopes to be united once more with her people.

“Meoran is right,” she said in a low voice. “I have chosen the path I run. He has not made me outcast, it is I who have made myself.” She raised her head. “I say it in words now so that it will not be said in blood tomorrow. Take care of your people, Meoran.”

She turned, choking on her last few words, and the hunger that twisted her belly. For a moment she saw the pain in the faces of her two friends; then she was beyond them and running down the stone slab. She heard Fessran leap up and run after her and she redoubled her speed. She heard panting just behind her and a voice. “Ratha, if you don’t stop, I’m going to pull you down like a dappleback!”

Ratha slowed, jogged to a stop.

“Go back, Fessran. He needs all of you,” she said.

“He’s wrong!” Fessran cried, her face wild with agony. “We need you. For what he has done, I swear I’ll seek his blood!”

“No!” Ratha hissed. “He’s right, Fessran. Didn’t you listen? Your people can only survive if they stay together, under one leader. The Red Tongue has tainted me, made me want something I was never meant for and should never have. You are still free of the taint, Fessran. Go back to Meoran, obey him and your people will live.”

“Ratha!”

“Go back, Fessran,” she said softly, touching the other with a paw. “And tell Thakur he is forgiven.”

Then, before Fessran could speak again, Ratha bounded down the trail, leaving her friend behind. Darkness closed about her, seeming even to block out the stars overhead, and as she ran she felt as though she were plunging down the maw of some hideous thing that had risen up to swallow her.