The Named: The Complete Series

Chapter Two

Ratha, the leader of the Named, squinted through the trees to a sun paled by blowing dust. She had grit in her fawn-colored pelt, in the fur of her tail, and between the toes of all four paws. Her tongue felt dry and sticky against her fangs. On the riverbank where she stood, three-horn deer and small dapplebacked horses milled in groups, guarded by her people. The Named had long ago given up the risky life of huters for the more stable existence of herders, living on the meat of the beasts they kept.

Many of the Named carried a small companion called a treeling on their backs: a lemurlike creature with large eyes, a pointed muzzle, a ringed tail, and hands instead of paws. The treelings were the descendants of a single female who had been adopted by one of the Named as a pet. Her hands had proved useful for tasks too difficult for claws or teeth.

Ratha had her own treeling, a female called Ratharee, who sat on her back and groomed her. She felt deft treeling fingers comb the fur along her spine. Ratharee seemed to know exactly where the fleas tickled and would groom there before Ratha twitched or scratched. Sometimes Ratha felt needle-sharp teeth as the treeling nibbled to dislodge a stubborn tick, but Ratharee never nipped her.

Ratha turned her attention to the animals. The dapplebacks stood with their three-toed forefeet in the sluggish flow, nuzzling the water and sucking it up with thirsty gulps. Ratha badly wanted a bath, but she knew she’d have to settle for licking herself with her tongue. The river was too shallow to do more than wet her belly.

At least it had some water. The brook that ran from the river through the home pastures had become a dry channel, forcing the Named to move their drinking site.

Every day the water supply dwindled as the river fell. It was so low now that the three-horns and dapplebacks could not be watered together, or their hooves would churn mud into the water, making it undrinkable. Ratha watched as Named herders held the animals together by circling them, snarling and showing teeth. Firekeepers took up outlying positions, some carrying torches bearing the fire-creature called the Red Tongue. In good times, when the meadow brook ran full and clear and the pasturage was lush, herders rarely displayed more than an irritated grimace to control the animals, and the Red Tongue was needed only to defend themselves against outside raids. Now thirst made the herdbeasts restive, irritable, likely to rebel or stampede. The herders needed the Firekeepers close by, backing up the threat of claws and teeth with the threat of fire.

The dapplebacks grunted and squealed, laying back their ears, shaking their stiff, short manes, and lashing out with hoofed toes at any herder not quick enough to evade their ill temper. Ratha’s flank still stung from an unexpected kick.

She gave a soft prrrup that brought Ratharee from her back onto the nape of her neck. The treeling chirred and draped herself so that her forelegs and muzzle lay along the slant of one feline shoulder, while rear legs and tail extended along the other. The treeling angled her nose out, watching the commotion. Perhaps, Ratha thought, Ratharee was looking at her own treeling offspring, who now rode the backs of young herders.

Ratha paced the bank as the clan rounded up the dapplebacks that had already drunk, clearing the way for a group of three-horn does and fawns. She saw Thakur, the herding teacher, dodge a charge from a thirsty doe who threatened him with its forked nose-horn. His treeling, Aree, leaped from his scruff into the air in front of the deer, screeching and flailing her ringed tail. The startled herdbeast jumped sideways, its charge broken. Thakur and the others moved the does in to drink.

A grunting bellow rose above the tumult of lowing and bawling herdbeasts. Ratharee, startled, clung tightly to Ratha’s neck as the largest three-horn stag broke loose from the herd and headed for the river.

Snarling, Ratha leaped to join other herders dashing to cut the beast off. She found Thakur galloping alongside her through the scattered trees that edged the river. His copper coat flashed as he ran through patches of sun and shade with Aree riding on his nape.

“Turn the stag!” the herding teacher yowled. “Don’t try to block him!” Ratha saw Fessran, the Firekeeper leader, join the fray. A torch flame roared at the end of the branch in Fessran’s jaws. Close behind ran Bira, a red-gold shadow to Fessran’s sand-colored pelt.

Ratha skidded to a stop to let Ratharee scramble off. The treeling bounced on her hind legs over to Bira and jumped on alongside Bira’s own companion.

“Stay behind, Firekeepers,” Ratha called as she raced between saplings. The fire-creature she called the Red Tongue could cow aggressive animals, but the Named used it only if they had no other way.

She and Thakur turned the three-horn stag in tighter circles until it danced and bucked, pivoting on its hind feet to meet the herders with head horns and jabbing at them with both prongs of the forked nose-horn. The stag paused in its flurry, snorting and panting. Ratha saw her chance.

She lunged toward the three-horn stag, stamping with both forepaws together. She caught its gaze, locked her own with the animal’s. The three-horn bellowed, shook its heavy neck, but could not look away. Ratha took another step toward the beast, intensifying her stare. She put all her will into it, menacing and hypnotizing the beast.

She took another slow step, holding her body low, bowing her back, hunching her shoulders. Memories of a similar incident edged into her mind, threatening to distract her. Once, when she had been Thakur’s student, she had confronted a defiant three-horn. That time she allowed her gaze to break, and the animal nearly trampled her.

From behind her came the soft hiss of the Red Tongue as it fluttered on Fessran’s torch. The power was there, if she wanted or needed it. But the Red Tongue was too savage a thing to be used lightly when dealing with herdbeasts. Brought too close, it could madden them, and the only choice then was a quick, killing bite. She didn’t want to sacrifice the stag now, even though the Named needed the meat. It was a bad time and place; the other animals were too restive.

Even so, the instinct to attack rose up in her, almost overwhelming her need to approach slowly, eyes fixed on the quarry. She fought down an urge to spring that tightened her muscles like a cramp. She knew that to return the stag safely to the herd, she must master it by the strength of her gaze. Her stare never faltered or wavered, holding the beast until its proud head dropped in defeat.

Ratha let out her breath as Ratharee came scampering back to her and clambered on. Other herders led the stag back to the herd. She shook herself, sneezed dust from her nose.

Thakur trotted up, his green eyes glowing in his copper-furred face. His treeling, Aree, was Ratharee’s mother. He had originally brought Aree to the clan as a pet.

“Well, yearling,” Thakur said, using his old teasing name for Ratha, “that was one of the best stare-downs I’ve seen.”

“We need every skilled herder we have,” Ratha answered, warmed by his praise. “Even me.” Her tail twitched. “And Shongshar’s rise taught me what can happen if I forget that I am also one of the clan and must work among our people to understand our needs.”

She paced back between the trees with Ratharee on her shoulder, thinking about Shongshar, the orange-eyed stranger she had admitted into the clan. His mating with Bira had produced cubs lacking the intelligence and self-awareness that the Named valued, and Ratha had been forced to exile those youngsters so that they would not grow up in the clan. Embittered by the loss, Shongshar had turned against her, using the Red Tongue to create a worshipful following among the Firekeepers that was strong enough to cast her down from leadership and out of the clan.

It had been two summers since Ratha had fought to gain back her position, but the Named had been long in recovering. Some, like the Firekeeper leader, Fessran, still bore scars on their pelts from Shongshar’s long fangs. Fessran had sided with the Firekeepers and Shongshar in the struggle two summers ago. But when Shongshar held Ratha down for the killing bite, Fessran flung herself between the two, taking the wound. Ratha had escaped his saber-teeth, but her memory of him would never fade from her mind and only gradually from those of her people. And now, too soon after that wrenching time, the drought had come.

The Named watered their herdbeasts with no more major incidents and drove them to a nearby clearing that still had scattered grass and a few thickets with green leaves. Ratha lay down in the shade, missing the sunning rock that stood in the middle of clan ground. She liked to lie on the sunning rock, looking out over the beasts and herders. But now, though spring had not yet yielded to summer, the brook running through the old pasture had dried up, and the green faded into gold and brown.

And how long would the river itself last? Each day it shrank, and the net of cracks in the muddy banks grew and deepened. Ratha remembered tales told by elders of seasons when the Named had left clan ground in a search for pasturage and water. But it had been so long ago that no one could recall where they went or how they managed.

As the animals straggled past, she watched dappleback foals capering about their mothers. Fewer had been born this dry spring. Among the three-horns, several fawns butted and nuzzled at the dams’ flanks. Three-horns often had twins, but this season none of the does had dropped more than one fawn, as if their bodies sensed that they would have food and milk to rear only a single youngster.

Ratha tipped her head back to eye the sun’s white-gold fire against a bleached sky. If rain came again, even a little, the forage might recover enough to last through the summer. But nothing could be done to recover from the disappointment of spring breeding. The herds would decrease instead of expanding this year. Still, if the Named limited the number of their own new cubs, perhaps they could live on what they had.

Ratha gave a soft snort at her own presumption. If there was anything she couldn’t control, it was the fertility of Named females. Though the clan’s mating season had been delayed by the hardships of a dry winter and spring, it would still come. And, if things went as they had the last breeding time, she herself wouldn’t be adding to the number of new cubs.

In a way she felt relieved. Watching mothers cope with their litters of squalling, scrambling youngsters made her feel tired, and the occasional times she did nursery duty, her patience was gone long before someone rescued her. It was clear she was not fit for motherly duties. Still...

Stop dreaming, she told herself crossly. You had your chance, and look what happened. She sighed. Every once in a while thoughts of her lost litter by the Un-Named male, whom she called Bonechewer, still entered her mind. The Un-Named were those of Ratha’s kind who lived outside the clan. Though they resembled her people so closely that they could mate with the Named, they lacked the spark of self-awareness that made thought and language possible. Or so Ratha had believed until her banishment for daring to challenge clan leadership with the Red Tongue, the fire-creature she had found. Her exile forced her to live among the Un-Named, and there she met Bonechewer, an intelligent male with the ability to speak. He and Ratha had mated.

By now she should have forgotten, but images of the cubs, especially of her daughter, Thistle-chaser, still haunted her. She remembered Thisde-chaser’s beautiful empty eyes, which spoke of a mind too stunted to know the world in the way the Named did.

I wonder where she is now. I remember Bonechewer said she lived to run with the Un-Named. Ratha sighed, blowing the breath out between her front fangs and startling Ratharee. Long ago she had dismissed any thought of trying to find the cubs. What good would it do her, or them either? She would look at their eyes and the old rage would rekindle, the fury of knowing that her flesh and blood were nothing more than animals like the herdbeasts on which she fed or the marauders she fought, or the treeling she carried on her back. Even Ratharee’s eyes held more flickerings of the mind’s light than her sons’ and daughter’s ever would.

She tore herself away from the bleak landscape of her memory and gazed out at the herders, their beasts, and their treelings. They were her sons and daughters now —all those who made up the clan, all those who knew names and their worth. She sighted along her nose to a distant point where a fire burned with a Firekeeper standing watch nearby. This too was her progeny, this flame-creature called the Red Tongue, with its power to twist and sear those who bore it. If she had known of this when she first found the Red Tongue, would she have brought it back as a gift to her people? She shivered again with the memory of Shongshar and the struggle between herders and Firekeepers that nearly destroyed the Named.

Now she was wiser. One like Shongshar would never again rise within the clan, not while she had wit and strength to prevent it.

Ratharee rubbed her small head against Ratha’s cheek, as if reminding her of the unexpected gift those events had brought: the coming of Ratharee and her kind. If Thakur hadn’t found that injured treeling cub, or if he had found it and decided to eat it...

She glanced to one side, catching a flicker of motion in the corner of one eye. Thakur, the clan herding teacher, was trotting toward her with Aree bouncing on his shoulder.

“Are the beasts settled?” she called to him.

“Yes, now that they’ve drunk. I’m glad you decided to stay near the river.” He lay down beside her and licked dust from his copper fur.

“I’m worried, herding teacher,” Ratha said. “You know how few young herdbeasts were born this season. We will have to limit the number we use for meat.”

“There won’t be enough,” Thakur said, looking at her steadily.

“I know. We can’t depend on the herdbeasts entirely for food. Later there may be other food, such as those soggy fruit-things the treelings eat. I know you like fruits, but my stomach won’t stand them.” She paused. “The Named used to hunt all kinds of animals. Perhaps some of those that we used to hunt we can learn to herd. It wasn’t that long ago that old Baire brought three-horns to us.”

“I remember when a certain three-horn stag chased a young herding student up a tree.” Thakur’s eyes glowed with amusement at this memory of Ratha. “But you are right, clan leader. We have overlooked other animals. We should keep creatures that can do well in dry seasons, as well as those that flourish in good times.”

“This is what I will do,” said Ratha finally. “I will call all the strong, young herders and Firekeepers to the sunning rock. Those I need to guard the animals and the Red Tongue on our lands I will send back to their posts. Those who remain will stand in pairs in a circle with their backs to me and their noses pointed outward. Each pair will travel in the direction they face, seeking a place with water and forage for our herds, as well as new beasts we can learn to keep.”

“You know that the mating season will soon come, even if it is short,” said Thakur. “I heard Fessran yowling last night. I don’t think she was just singing.”

“With fewer of the Named on clan land during the mating season, fewer cubs will be born, I hope.”

“Perhaps that is sad, clan leader, but it is wise,” answered Thakur. “And I will also take my place among those you send.”

Ratha was unsure how to respond to Thakur’s offer. She found herself starting to lick a paw and scrub her face to avoid answering him.

“Yearling,” he said, using his old teasing name for her again, “I leave the clan every mating season. You know why, and I thought my going no longer bothered you.”

She licked her pad and gave her cheek a harder swipe than she meant to. “You won’t sire empty-eyed cubs on me, if that’s what you fear. I have not birthed cubs by anyone since Bonechewer. The matings don’t take.”

Thakur looked at the ground. “It is not just you I worry about, Ratha. The others too—Bira, Fessran. They don’t think about such things when the mating fever takes them. If I stay, the risk of siring witless cubs remains.”

Ratha knew what he said was true, and a part of her cried out in sorrow for him. He would never take a mate from among the Named and risk fathering young on a clan female.

Thakur, along with Bonechewer, who was his brother and had lived with the Un-Named, had been born from a mating between a clan female called Reshara and an Un-Named male. Both brothers possessed gifts, showing that such pairings could produce cubs with the light of intelligence in their eyes. But the results were too erratic to trust and too tragic to risk.

Though Thakur knew only that Ratha had birthed Bonechewer’s cubs and lost them, he did not know why. But he had witnessed the results of another mating between one of the Named and an Un-Named outsider.

Shongshar’s cubs by Bira had lacked the ability to speak and think that the Named so valued. Thakur knew that well, for he had helped Ratha carry both litterlings from clan ground.

Thakur nosed Ratha gently, mistaking the reason for her mood. “Don’t mourn because you have no young, clan leader. We, the Named, are your cubs. And I also have sons and daughters in the young ones who learn the ways of herding from me.”

The treeling on his shoulder chirred, as if to remind him that she too was part of his adopted kin. Ratha’s small companion, Ratharee, trilled back at her mother.

“When those who are to journey take their places, let me choose where I will stand,” Thakur asked. “And let me go by myself, as I always do.”

“Do you know where you want to go?”

“Yes. I will stand and lift my head to place the setting sun at my whisker-tips. It will lead me to a place I have seen only once, from a distance, to a body of water greater than any lake.”

“Then I will have the gathering at sunset, and you will choose your place,” Ratha answered, her head full of the pictures Thakur’s words conjured. She felt a prick of envy, wishing she could travel with him, leaving behind the burden of leadership. But he would return and perhaps take her with him to see what he had found, though not for a while. She watched him pad away with Aree on his back, his tail swinging. She wished he didn’t remind her so much of Bonechewer, the father of her own lost cubs.

In the midafternoon heat Ratha ambled instead of trotted as she made her rounds among the scattered beasts, herders, and Firekeepers. At the nearest guard-fire, she saw Fessran. A tickle of worry about her friend crept along her back. The Firekeeper leader had seemed subdued lately.

Ratha touched noses and rubbed the full length of her body against her friend, crooking her tail over Fessran’s back. She could tell by the warm tone in Fessran’s scent that the Firekeeper welcomed such open affection. But underneath, Fessran’s smell told Ratha her friend was troubled.

“Thakur says he heard you singing last night,” Ratha said, trying to tease. “It is known among the Named that when Fessran is in full voice, the mating season is not far behind.”

Fessran’s reply was flat. “Thakur must have his ears stuffed with herdbeast hair. That was Bira, not me.”

Ratha’s ears swiveled forward, and she tried to look into Fessran’s eyes as the Firekeeper asked, “No one’s been complaining about me, have they? I mean, I haven’t shirked my duties even while I’ve been looking for my treeling.”

“No,” Ratha answered. She felt her own companion on her shoulder. Fessran looked a bit scruffy. Ever since her Fessree had disappeared, she had to depend on her own tongue for grooming.

“Do you want to borrow Ratharee?” Ratha asked.

“No. I appreciate the offer, but grooming isn’t the same if another treeling does it.” Fessran let her forepaws slide out until her creamy belly fur flattened the grass. “Funny. I never thought I’d really get attached to the little flea-picker. You and Thakur are as soft as dung when it comes to treelings, but I thought I was being more practical about it. It’s not Fessree’s little hands I miss. It’s her sitting on my shoulder and making noises in my ear. I got used to it.”

Ratha saw her shift some of the weight off her left foreleg, rolling half onto her side.

“How is your leg?”

“Thanks to Shongshar, it’ll never be the same again, even though it’s had this long to heal. I should be grateful that it works at all. Shoulder’s just a bit stiff. Bites heal better when you’re younger.” She licked the two puckered scars on her upper foreleg. There was another set of scars on her ribs where Shongshar’s saber-teeth had emerged through the leg and into her chest. It was a near-fatal wound, and Ratha was amazed and grateful Fessran had healed this well. Although Bira was coming along as Fessran’s backup for Firekeeper leader, Ratha needed Fessran in that role.

“You know, I wouldn’t feel so bad about Fessree,” Ratha said in an attempt to sound comforting. “Treelings sometimes wander off, but they come back. Aree did that to Thakur.”

“Well, I thought it might be because of the mating season. Everybody’s smell changing and all that. I notice it makes treelings nervous.” Fessran fell silent for a minute, but her scent told Ratha that she wasn’t in heat and probably wouldn’t be this season. After her wound and the long recovery that followed, she wasn’t yet in condition to bear a litter.

“You know why I’m so caught up with that miserable flea-picker?” Fessran asked suddenly, after a long silence. “It’s because of Nyang.”

Nyang. For a moment Ratha switched her tail, lost. Nyang was dead. He had been Fessran’s eldest cub from her last litter, one of those who went over to Shongshar when the clan split into two factions. He had been drowned when Ratha and Thakur managed to flood out the cave where Shongshar had hidden his worship-fire. In helping Ratha to dig the trench that diverted the stream from its banks, Fessran had helped in her son’s death.

“I don’t know why it’s bothering me. I still have Khushi and Chita, though they both are grown. I never felt I knew Nyang as well as I did the others. And then he was gone, and I lost my chance. Well, it’s foolish to mourn now.”

“No, it isn’t foolish at all,” said Ratha, thinking of her own daughter, Thistle-chaser.

Fessran stared at her paws. “After his death I kept thinking of Nyang until it hurt too much. And then Fessree started grooming me very gently and saying treeling nonsense in my ear, and it helped.”

“I know.”

Fessran lifted her muzzle abruptly, startling Ratha. “Do you really know, Ratha? Or would you like me to believe you know? Even though you are clan leader, you still seem so young to me. Have you ever felt the pain of losing a cub you birthed?”

Ratha closed her eyes, trying to keep Thistle-chaser’s story from rushing onto her tongue. No one knew about her lost litter except Thakur, and it was something best kept to herself. Besides, what good would it do to tell except to raise her own old pain again? Fessran didn’t need that. What she wanted was strength from her clan leader, not weakness.

Instead Ratha said, “If it will help, Thakur and I will search for Fessree.”

Fessran hauled herself to her feet, trying not to favor her shoulder. “I’ve been everywhere. It’s easier to see into the treetops now that the leaves are shriveling in the drought. No. You’re both busy. I’ll just leave Fessree to herself, the ungrateful bug-eater.”

She got up and walked off, swinging her tail. Ratha sat at the foot of the sunning rock, looking after her and wondering what else she could have said. Fessran’s change in mood had caught her by surprise, thrown her off balance. The accusation against her of immaturity and lack of understanding stung like a scratch. And even more so because it wasn’t true.

As she had promised, Ratha called the gathering on the following day just before sunset. The Named came to sit before the sunning rock in the old pasture, while the Firekeepers and their leader kindled the meeting fire from torches brought from the fire-den. Ratha noticed that the blaze was made large enough to serve as a beacon to those still coming in from distant corners of clan territory, but not so fierce as to serve as a hypnotic center for the gathering. That way lay danger, as she and Fessran had both learned. Their experience with Shongshar and his fire-worship had taught them caution.

From the sunning rock, she looked down at her friend. Fessran stood to one side, sitting stiffly with a torch in her jaws, shadows dancing across her sand-colored fur. Though at first Fessran had been reluctant, she now allowed and encouraged her Firekeepers to make use of treeling skills. And the treelings had proven more useful to the Firekeepers than anyone could have foreseen. Only this morning, Fessran’s assistant, Bira, had showed Ratha a young student who had taught his treeling to twist grass and bark into a long tail strong enough to wrap about a bundle of sticks. With twigs bound together, a Firekeeper could drag much heavier loads.

Ratha had been intending to send the youngster and his treeling out on the search, but now, she decided, she would keep him here and have him teach his new art to others who might use it. The young male would be disappointed at being denied the adventure, but he would be proud to know he had developed a skill worth keeping.

She sat up and spoke of the purpose for this gathering and of the searchers she was sending out to seek new sources of game, pasturage, and water. She was careful to say she would choose only those who could be spared from their duties, so as not to leave the herds vulnerable or the fires unguarded. And when she had finished, she called Thakur and let him take the place of his choosing, facing into the setting sun.

The other searchers, chosen from among both herders and Firekeepers, stood in pairs with their whiskers facing outward. Thakur stood alone. He was used to being by himself with just Aree for company, and he was experienced in fending for himself away from the clan.

“You who will journey have been first to eat from the kill,” said Ratha. “Your bellies are full, your legs strong, and the hope of the Named goes with you.”

At her word, the scouts started on their search. Thakur glanced back as he took his first steps from the sunning rock. The glow in his eyes and the sheen on his fur told her of his eagerness. The treeling on his back fluffed her fur petulantly, as if saying she was getting too settled for traveling, but she gave her tail a jaunty wave in parting.

Ratha watched the scouts as they left, but her gaze lingered longest on one copper coat.

Though you are not taking the Red Tongue itself, Thakur, she thought, may the power of its spirit guard you.