Ratha’s Creature

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ratha stared into the depths of the fire, curling up from its nest of branches into the night sky. It burned loudly, crackling and spitting. The Red Tongue lived both by day and by night, but to Ratha it seemed strongest when it burned against the darkness. It was a creature of the night, yet it obeyed none of the laws of stealth and silence that governed other animals.

Her people gathered around the fire. She could see their green and yellow eyes through the shimmering air and the smoky haze. She took her gaze from the fire’s heart, looking away into cool blackness. The Red Tongue’s image still danced before her eyes in ghostly form and she shut them. She could not delay long. Her people were waiting. So were the Un-Named who hid in the forest beyond the meadow’s edge.

Ratha seized a branch from the pile beside her. It was a good one, she thought, smelling the sharp tang of pitch. She thrust one end into the flame, pulled it out and watched the Red Tongue blossom around the end.

“Fessran,” she said between her teeth. Fessran limped to her and took the torch.

“May the Red Tongue be strong tonight,” she said before her jaws closed on the shaft.

“Guard the animals well, herder,” Ratha answered when her jaws were free. “If my creature holds the Un-Named from our throats tonight, then you shall share the power I hold. I do not forget who fought with me when the Red Tongue’s light first shone in the eyes of the clan.”

Fessran dipped her torch and carried it away.

I would also have called you friend, for you have been to me like a lair-sister, Ratha thought. But I dare not do more than acknowledge your loyalty.

She said another name and lit another torch, watching as the next herder came forward from the circle. He took his brand and followed Fessran.

Again, Ratha plunged a branch into the Red Tongue and passed it to a pair of waiting jaws. One herder after another took their torches and trotted away to take up their station between the herdbeasts and the Un-Named. The orange stars of the firebrands shone up and down the meadow, sending dancing shadows across the grass into the trees. Screams broke from the forest, as if the firelight had reached in and clawed those hiding there. She had heard those screams before. They had risen from her own throat when she hid where the Un-Named were hiding now. But as each herder took his or her place, the cries changed. The screams of hate and triumph faltered as uncertainty crept in. The voices wavered, and Ratha could hear wrath fighting with fear. A new creature stalked the meadow this night and the Un-Named were afraid.

She thought of her old pack, of the young leader, the witless old gray and the others. They would be crouching together beneath the trees and turning to each other with eyes filled with bewilderment. What was this terrible blazing thing that chased the night away and stole the courage from the strongest among them? Where and why did it come? Only one among the Un-Named would know. Ratha stared beyond the fire, trying not to remember Bonechewer. He might be out there along with the cubs she had birthed with him.

She bared her fangs as if Bonechewer were standing before her, wearing that mocking grin that showed his broken fang. She grabbed a branch, biting so hard that it cracked. She threw it aside, seized another and thrust it into the fire. When she turned, the face before her was Bonechewer’s. She felt her tail flare into a brush and all the hairs along her back stiffened.

The eyes were green, not amber and the muzzle bore a long jagged wound, still swollen and crusted.

“Thakur,” she said and let all her hairs lie flat. “Are you the last?”

He approached, his eyes puzzled and wary.

No wonder, she thought. I must have looked ready to attack him.

“All the others have taken their torches, Giver of the New Law,” he said, but he did not open his mouth for the fire-brand as the others had.

“You may go without one if you wish,” Ratha said. She placed the branch back in the fire. “It must hurt you to open your mouth.”

“It will take much time to heal,” said Thakur. “Meoran did not keep his claws clean.”

“Once you feared my creature,” Ratha said softly.

“I still fear it. I fear it more now than I ever did.”

He looked steadily at Ratha, and there was something in his eyes and his smell that chilled her.

“I mocked you for your fear,” she said. “I will not mock you again.”

“I will take a torch,” Thakur answered. “I will need it when the raiders strike. But first, Giver of the New Law, I will show you your people.”

She wrinkled her brows at him, dismayed and puzzled by his words. Now was the time to prepare for the attack that might break from the forest at any instant. It was not the time to follow Thakur about the meadow to see whatever he might have to show her. She was about to refuse and send him back to the herd when the thought came almost unbidden into her mind.

He is the wisest among us. I turned his wisdom away when I should have listened. Now, perhaps, it is too late, but I will listen this time.

She let the fire burn by itself and followed Thakur. He did not lead her directly to the nearest torchbearer. Instead he walked toward a flame flickering at the far end of the meadow. He approached from behind and downwind so that the torchbearer could neither see nor smell him. He was almost within reach of the herder’s tail when the other leaped up and whirled around, swinging the firebrand. The flame roared and Thakur flattened in the grass. He rolled away, leaving Ratha facing the torchbearer. A paralyzing fear shot through her as she saw her own creature in the jaws of another. She who had tamed the Red Tongue could only cower before it in the instant before the torchbearer stopped his assault.

Beneath the fear was anger. Thakur had deliberately startled the young herder and then scuttled aside, letting her be the one to face the attack. He knew there would be no real danger once the torchbearer recognized her.

The young face was one she knew well; even too well. The torchbearer was the son of Srass, the old herder she had seen killed in the meadow. She remembered the old herder’s face at the last moment of his life; as the gray-coat ripped flesh from his quivering flank and the silver’s teeth crushed his skull. Pain and rage distorted the ugly muzzle but it was still Srass’s face until he died. Now she looked at the herder who was Srass’s son and saw nothing she knew. The red light that shone from the torchbearer’s eyes came from a fire that burned within as well as without. It was a new kind of wildness and a new kind of savagery she had never seen in those who used only teeth and claws.

She would have whimpered and backed away, but pride and anger held her where she stood. The torchbearer lowered his brand and his face became again the face of Srass’s son with all its lop-eared homeliness. But Ratha knew she would never be able to look at him again without remembering the change the fire had cast over him.

Is this how I looked when I stood before the clan with the Red Tongue in my jaws?

“Keep your guard, herder,” she said at last. “We should not have startled you.”

At the corner of her eye, she saw Thakur rise from his crouch and shake dry grass from his fur. Howls echoed across the meadow from the forest, and she saw the young herder turn to challenge the hidden enemy, the fire’s glow leaping in his eyes.

“Come, Giver of the New Law,” said a voice very near her. “I am still without a torch.”

Ratha’s fury rose and spilled over. “Thakur, I could feed you the Red Tongue as I did Meoran or have you gutted like a herdbeast!”

He looked back at her and the green of his eyes seemed to swallow her. “You could, Giver of the New Law. You may.”

The reply enraged her further, but she could do nothing except fume and bristle. She knew she could not strike him. “Why do you show me this?” she burst out at last. “You know as well as I that we must keep the Red Tongue if we are to live.”

“Look inside yourself for the answer,” he said. He paused. “I see you are angry, so I know you have found it.” He trotted back toward the fire she had left burning at the center of the meadow.

She ground her teeth together as if she were slicing meat. He knew as well as she that they could not turn aside from this new trail. What was he trying to do then?

One must know the path one runs even if the ground underfoot is not as one chooses, she thought and the answer almost came in Thakur’s voice. Her ears flattened. She was not grateful. Sometimes it was easier to take a path not knowing what lay underfoot or ahead.

The cries from the forest rose in pitch and intensity. Soon the Un-Named would begin their attack. The hair rose on Ratha’s neck, letting the cold of the night onto her skin. Would the Red Tongue save her people? They were still few and the Un-Named many. Only when morning came would she know, if she herself were still alive.

Another thought rose from beneath her anger and it too seemed to speak in Thakur’s voice. Even if the Red Tongue saved her people, they would never be the same. Once they were the Named, under Baire and then Meoran. Now they would be what she called them, a new name given without realizing what it truly meant. The People of the Red Tongue. And now she had seen the first of her new breed and now she knew.

As she returned to her fire, she passed other herdfolk. She approached them openly, letting herself be seen and smelled. Perhaps what she had seen in the young herder’s eyes was only anger at being startled. Perhaps it was only the brief intensity of fear that changed him and not the stamp of the Red Tongue. It was a new hope, but it did not live long enough to grow. Each of the torchbearers, even though unprovoked, held traces of the same look she had seen in the face of Srass’s son. Violent and gentle alike were all transformed by the blazing power they held between their jaws.

This is what we are, Ratha thought as she went from one to the other. This is what we are now.

Thakur was standing beside the fire when she returned. She lit a branch for him and gave it to him without words, feeling as though she were kicking mud into a clear pool even though she must drink from it later. He lowered his brand and trotted away, becoming one more of the flickering orange dots scattered about the meadow.

Again the raider’s cries swelled from the meadow. Ratha lifted her muzzle, her ears quivering. She saw the circle of herders about her tighten, bunching their beasts in the center. The torches swung outward.

She seized a branch of her own, lit it and left the fire to burn in its dirt clearing. As she reached the outer edge of the circle, the attack began.

She had hoped that the Red Tongue in the forest would have frightened the raiders away, but she knew that hate and hunger were as strong as fear. Her worries were confirmed when a scout reported that the Un-Named were circling around the areas that were still burning. He had spotted one group of the raiders making their way along a stream bank, making her suspect that there was at least one among the Un-Named who had some knowledge of the Red Tongue. She did not admit to herself that she knew who that one might be.

Shadows that had been as still as rocks or bushes against the trees crept swiftly into the meadow. They streamed from the forest, eyes and teeth glinting as they emerged into the open.

Ratha planted her torch and looked about her in all directions. There are too many, she thought, feeling her heartbeat shake her. Even with the Red Tongue, we are too few. The herders about her seemed to share her dismay, for she heard whimpers and saw bodies huddling together. And the raiders seemed to sense it too. They came faster, their hissing grew more vicious. And then they were no longer creeping but charging; black forms bore down on the herders from all sides. Ratha seized her torch again and thrust it outward with the rest. The attack gathered speed. The torchbearers waited.

Trembling, Ratha tried to peer beyond the circle of orange light. The raiders were still coming but the attack was faltering, its edges growing ragged as many of the Un-Named hesitated before the firelight. Ratha could hear individual voices rise above the yowling as the Un-Named leaders tried to drive their packs to fight. There was fear in those cries as well as rage. Fights began in the Un-Named ranks. Those who sought to flee the new power battled with those who forced them to attack. The mass of the enemy became a churning moonlit sea, turning in on itself.

It quieted. The howls of those who had fled faded into the forest. The torchbearer’s brands shone into fewer eyes, but in those faces hate ruled over fear. The first attack had failed. The second was about to begin.

The herders faced the Un-Named across an open swath of meadow. With a howl that rose to a shriek, a shape flew from the Un-Named ranks. Firelight flashed on a silvery pelt and Ratha recognized the jaws that had crushed Srass’s skull. The silvercoat drew the others after him and the Un-Named surged forward to meet the herders.

Torches fluttered and roared. Bared fangs were met with fire. The attackers reeled back howling from the touch of the flames and some carried the terrible creature away with them, smoldering as hot coals and ash in their fur ate into their flesh. Some went mad with fear and lay thrashing and frothing while their companions trampled them.

Ratha whirled to face the snarling silver. She dodged as he flung himself at her and dragged her torch across his face over his eye. The charred wood snapped, the end falling onto his foreleg. Blind and fear-crazed, the silver lurched away.

Ratha saw two other herders beating him across the back with their brands as he fled. She lost sight of him.

The branch in her mouth was now only glowing coals, creeping toward her whiskers. She dropped it and scuffed dirt on it. Other brands were also burning down or had broken against Un-Named ribs. She saw torchbearers slashing with fangs and claws and blood gleaming red in the firelight. She ducked a raider’s strike and ran to the bonfire. She lit a new torch and passed it to a wounded herder who carried only a broken stub, too dazed to throw the useless thing away. His eyes brightened; he snatched the new light and plunged back into the fray. As she stood panting, Fessran came alongside.

“Giver of the New Law, let me carry new torches to the ones who need them,” she said. “That is not your duty.”

“It shall be yours, Fessran. You are now the keeper of the Red Tongue and its cubs. If it still burns when dawn comes, its tending shall be your honor and your duty.”

Fessran passed her a lighted branch. “Go and drive the Un-Named back. The Red Tongue will eat their bodies when the sun rises.”

Ratha charged back into the fighting, her roar spilling from between her teeth. She leaped at the nearest enemy, raking him and searing him. Cries of rage and triumph broke from the weary herders, and they flung themselves on the raiders with renewed fury.

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.