The Named: The Complete Series

Chapter Eight

Fessran and Khushi were gone from clan ground for many days. For Ratha, those days dragged like the weary herders’ feet, as the weather grew hotter and the trails dustier.

She lay in late-afternoon shade that felt as hot as open sun. She panted, feeling worn out and worried. She wished she had delayed Thakur from returning to the lake-of-waves and its odd inhabitant. The task of controlling herdbeasts made restive by thirst and flies was a wearying one, in addition to her other duties as leader. And the new water source she thought would last had begun to fail.

Both Thakur and Fessran were gone. She let her jaw sag as she panted. Letting them both go had been a bad decision. But how was she to know that Khushi would turn up with a stolen cub from the ranks of the Un-Named, who might well have sprung from the loins of her bitterest enemy? Could anyone blame her if she wanted that litterling off clan ground as fast as possible and shred the consequences!

Letting Fessran go with Khushi was only a quicker way to speed him off with his unwanted burden. Ratha sighed. Not a good decision. Even if all Fessran wanted was her lost treeling—but Ratha couldn’t bring herself to believe that.

She lay with her tail flicking, thinking about the good and bad parts of what Thakur had told her before he left. The good part was the spring. Thakur had described how underground water flowed from a series of cracks in a cliff that lay just behind the beach where he had found the duck-footed dapplebacks. With its source deep in the earth, the spring would run even when everything else went dry. The spring watered thickets where three-horns could browse and patches of meadow that would do for the dapplebacks.

The bad part was that the Named would have to leave clan ground for as long as the drought lasted. Ratha laid her chin down on grass that once would have cooled but now crackled. The journey there would be exhausting. She thought of the river drives and the prospect of increasing the tumult, dust, and weariness over days of traveling.

Before she uprooted the clan, she must see the spring for herself, to be absolutely sure it would support the needs of the Named and their herds through the drought. She wanted to study the wave-wallowers themselves, along with the Un-Named one who lived among them.

Soon she would follow Thakur’s tracks to this great, brine-filled lake. She itched to be gone. But she meant to take Fessran with her, and the Firekeeper had not yet returned. She sighed and laid her nose on her paws instead of the scratchy grass.

Though the clan would be losing its leader and chief Firekeeper for a short time, Ratha felt that this journey was essential, and she needed Fessran’s opinion as much as her own. She had already spoken to the older herder, Cherfan, about taking over clan leadership while she was gone. And Bira, Fessran’s second-in-command among the Firekeepers, had overcome much of her shyness and had grown skilled in the management of the Red Tongue and those who kept it.

Fessran’s absence would give Bira a chance to emerge from the chief Firekeeper’s shadow and show her abilities. Cherfan was a strong, experienced herder and respected by all. Ratha did not think her own and Fessran’s absence would be long enough to cause difficulty; at the slow rate the river was dropping, things would remain stable enough until she had found a place for the clan.

Fessran and Khushi surprised her by arriving later that same afternoon. A herder ran ahead, bringing the news to her and waking her from her sleep in the shade. As soon as the two travelers came into sight, Ratha saw Fessran was still missing her treeling. Khushi’s jaws, thankfully, were empty. With a rising purr, she invited them to stretch out beside her.

When both had rested and groomed, Ratha asked how they had fared on the journey. She noticed that Fessran let Khushi do most of the talking.

“We didn’t find the cub’s mother. I didn’t expect that we would,” Khushi said matter-of-factly. “We left him in a safe place. If she’s still in the area, she’ll find him.”

Ratha glanced at Fessran in surprise. “You agreed to let Khushi do that?”

Fessran seemed preoccupied. She was slow to respond, and her voice sounded distant.

“We couldn’t think of anything else,” she said. “The mother was gone, and we couldn’t find her. We would only have frightened her more if we had. And you would have chewed our ears to scraps if you saw us bringing the cub back.” Fessran stretched out in the shade and began grooming her belly. “Anyway, I did some thinking while I was on the trail and decided you were right. There was no use in making a fuss about this Un-Named cub when we will have our own.”

But you won’t be having cubs this season, Ratha thought.

She tongued her own fur, wondering where her feeling of uneasiness had suddenly come from. Nothing in Fessran’s smell or manner alarmed her, yet she had the sense that something wasn’t right. Well, it wasn’t like Fessran to give up fighting for something she cared about. Not so abruptly.

What are you complaining about? she asked herself crossly. I made Fessran obey me, which is something I’ve had trouble doing ever since I became leader.

Yet this time Fessran’s willfulness had seemed to echo her own conscience. She might just be wrong about this litterling. Her judgment might have been too hasty and too harsh. And not just with him...

She felt slightly dismayed, as if her conscience had given in too easily, just as Fessran had. As if the stronger and not so likable part of her had won out.

I don’t like it, but that’s what made me clan leader.

She decided to forget about the cub. There were other things to think about; new journeys to plan. Fessran would come with her, and perhaps the time together would allow her to mend the rift in their friendship. Warming to the idea, she laid out the prospect of the coastward journey to the Firekeeper.

Fessran, however, was curiously unenthusiastic, and when Ratha said she wanted to leave the following day, the look in Fessran’s eyes was one of reluctance.

“Are you sure you want to leave so soon?” Fessran asked.

“I have to see Thakur’s spring for myself, and that must be done quickly.”

“That makes sense,” Fessran agreed, though her voice sounded flat. “Why do you want me, though? I’m not a herder. You and Thakur are more skilled at judging if a place is fit for keeping three-horns.”

“You were a herder before I gave you Firekeeper leadership. Fessran, I can’t make this judgment alone. You and Thakur are the ones I trust the most. If I must tear the Named from clan ground, let me have some hope that I am doing what is right.”

“You haven’t had doubts about other things, clan leader,” Fessran replied, and the way she said it told Ratha she had not forgotten the Un-Named cub. Before Ratha’s ears could flatten, Fessran yawned widely. “All right, I’ll come. But give me at least a day to rest. My shoulder aches and my pads feel like I’ve walked across every rock in the world. I just want to be left alone to sleep.”

Fessran got what she wanted, and Khushi soon joined her in the dense shade beneath a pine that stood apart from the other trees in and around the meadow. It was Bonechewer’s grave-tree. Ratha wondered if Fessran had chosen the spot deliberately, so that the clan leader would not come near.

She was surprised by the strength of anger and sadness that weighted her steps as she padded away. She remembered her dead mate too well: the gleaming copper coat, the amber eyes, and the voice that was sardonic yet caring. And she remembered the faces of their cubs and especially the face of their daughter, Thistle-chaser. The blank, bewildered stare of her own litterling suddenly became the equally empty gaze of the Un-Named orphan she had ordered Khushi to abandon.

Toward sunset something drew her to the pine again. If Fessran was as weary as she had sounded, she would still be asleep, and Ratha planned not to wake her. But when she arrived near the grave-tree, she heard only one set of rumbling snores, and they were Khushi’s. Fessran had gone.

Ratha sniffed the ground around the pine. Her first instinct was to track the Firekeeper, but suddenly she grew disgusted with herself. Being clan leader was turning her suspicious and sour, ruining an old and valued friendship. Did she really have a good reason not to trust Fessran? Did she have to know where everyone was and what he was doing at every moment?

She shook herself, grimaced, and trotted away.

Fessran returned, in good time to supervise the lighting of watchfires for the night. Ratha watched the slim, sandy form trotting from one Firekeeper to the next, giving advice, instructions, and seeing that the fires were kept properly fed yet contained. Ratha let her suspicions drop with a sigh of relief. Wherever Fessran went was her own business. She worked hard and well for the clan. There might be mutterings about what she had done in the past, but she had done more than enough to redeem herself, and no one could fault her now.

In the morning, Ratha woke Fessran and met with Cherfan and Bira. If this journey yielded the refuge the Named sought, she said to the older herder, then Fessran would return with instructions to guide the clan, and Cherfan was to bring them under her direction. After the Firekeeper leader gave some brief advice to Bira, Fessran and Ratha set out on their journey to the coast.

Days later, Thakur approached the lone tree at the clearing that lay inland from the beach. He smelled places where two of the Named had chin-rubbed against rough bark. Ratha’s scent he knew well, and Fessran’s had an acrid, smoky undertone that told of her place as Firekeeper leader. They had both passed this way not long ago.

He also sniffed an odor that surprised him and reawakened his belly-rumbles: fresh meat. Either the two females had just eaten or they were carrying prey. His ears cocked forward. He knew Ratha had learned to hunt during her exile from the clan, but the smell told him that this was no wild prey. The meat came from a herdbeast. How could they have dragged it all that way and kept it from turning rank? Perhaps one of them was just carrying a small piece for him in her mouth. His own watered at the thought.

Thakur circled back to follow their trail, then hesitated. Ratha and Fessran’s arrival meant company and perhaps food, but it also meant that the time the clan leader had allotted him to study Newt and her sea-creatures was gone. He felt now that he might have enough knowledge to try herding the seamares. Ratha would be eager to test his suggestion. But this would mean more intrusion into Newt’s life. Thakur sensed that the place she had made for herself was precarious and could easily be destroyed.

The smell of the two Named females and the tantalizing odor of food teased him onward, and he trotted after them with Aree riding on his nape. Soon after he broke out of thinning forest into coastal meadow, he caught sight of two tawny backs moving ahead of him through the grass. He didn’t need to call, for the wind had carried his smell ahead of him. He saw both figures turn, their ears and whiskers lifting at the sight of him. But although he smelled food, neither Ratha nor Fessran carried anything in their mouths. His belly gave a disappointed grumble as he jogged to a stop in front of them.

Fessran took one sniff at him, then retreated, grimacing. “Herding teacher, you are wearing the most disgusting stink I have ever smelled on anyone.”

“You’d better get used to smelling me this way.” Thakur grinned. “Those duck-footed dapplebacks won’t let me near them unless I roll in their dung. I’m sure there is plenty for you.”

Fessran gave her ruff a disdainful lick, as if the noxious stuff was already on her. “I don’t mind herdbeast dung, but I can tell these beasts don’t eat grass. Ugh!”

“May you eat of the liver and sleep in the driest den,” Ratha said, touching noses with him, but her whiskers twitched back. She rubbed her forehead against his cheek and started to slide along him, her tail crooked over, but she broke off midway, saying, “Fessran may be rude, but she’s right. Phew, that’s strong!”

Feeling like a pariah, he took a position downwind from both and asked them stiffly if that was better. Now that his own aroma was carried away by the breeze, he caught the maddening meat-smell and wondered where it was coming from.

Ratha had only her treeling on her back, but Fessran was festooned with something odd. It looked like she had rolled in some vines and had ended up tangled in strands and bundles of leaves.

Fessran turned abruptly to Ratha and said, “Well, we’ve carried the food long enough. Get your treeling to undo these leaves, and we’ll feed Thakur before his tongue hangs out so far he steps on it.”

At a nudge and purr from Ratha, Ratharee hopped onto Fessran’s back and started pulling a leafy bundle apart. From the covering, Ratha drew a chunk of meat with her fangs and offered it to the herding teacher. Thakur didn’t think about where it had come from; he just plopped down with the food between his paws and began slicing it with his side teeth. It was liver.

The richness of it soon sated him enough so his curiosity arose once again. He got to his feet, licking his chops, and asked how the two females had carried it. Ratha showed him cords of twisted bark fiber that bound large leaves still covering the remaining bundles of food. He saw how the cords were wrapped about the Firekeeper’s body to lash the packets to her sides.

“The leaves keep flies off,” Ratha explained. “The meat isn’t as good as we’d get from a cull, but it isn’t carrion either.”

Thakur sniffed a packet then turned to Ratha. “Did you think of this?”

“A Firekeeper student and his treeling came up with these twisted bark vines. You saw them being used to bind wood. Fessran figured out that we could use them to lash things onto ourselves, and since we knew you’d be hungry... ”

“And we thought we’d be hungry too, after a while,” Fessran reminded her. “Although I’m beginning to wonder if the idea was so clever. I’m not sure I’m ever going to get myself untangled from this mess.”

Thakur stretched, enjoying his full stomach. One thing good about liver was that it was so rich that one didn’t have to gorge oneself to feel sated.

“You can have more, Thakur,” Fessran offered, evidently wanting to be rid of the sticky bundles against her sides. “After all, we did come to see your duck-footed dapplebacks, and the best way to start is to see how they taste. I imagine we’ll have plenty of fresh meat, so there’s no use saving this.”

“I would save it anyway,” Thakur answered carefully, trying not to show the sudden dismay he felt when he heard her words.

Ratha glanced at him curiously, and he knew she sensed his change in mood. He might be able to conceal his feelings from Fessran, since she often paid little attention to such things, but not Ratha.

She took him aside and said, “Thakur, have you found that these animals are not suited to our purpose after all? If that is true, I won’t be angry. You did say you needed to study them before we arrived, and you have done so.”

Thakur looked back at her, knowing she had grown well into her role as leader. “No, that is not what troubles me.” With a wary glance at Fessran, he explained his concern that a Named invasion of the seamare herd might frighten away the young cripple who lived among the creatures. And too much disruption might cause the herd itself to flee from the jetty.

“It would be better for us to learn with just a few animals,” he said. “There is a smaller group of duck-foots who make their homes in the rocks north of the jetty itself. If we work with those, we will do better.”

Ratha agreed that his plan sounded wise and asked him to take her and Fessran to see the creatures. But first, she said, she wanted to see the spring. If the Named were to bring their herds here, she must be sure that there was forage and water to sustain them.

Slightly inland from the beach lay a scarp whose face was cut in a sheer cliff. A forest of mixed broadleaf and small pine grew in the cooling shadow thrown by the cliff. From cracks in slate and blue bands of rock, the water came, bearing the scent and taste of earthen caverns. It did not gush but ran in a steady, even stream without faltering.

“The smell of this water tells me it will never dry up,” Ratha said, squinting up through the rich, slanting light between the trees. Thakur watched her crouch on a stone and dip her chin into the pool that collected beneath the spring. “The gravel bottom won’t muddy when the herdbeasts drink. You have done well to find such a place.”

Then she and Fessran began inspecting low-hanging boughs to be sure none of the new foliage could harm herdbeasts. Nosing through brush and grass, Thakur helped them search for poisonous weeds or plants with white berries. He also kept a lookout for an annoying herb with leaves that grew in clusters of three, which could cause the Named to itch if it got through to the skin beneath their fur or on their noses.

He walked with Ratha between thickets, looking at the quantity and freshness of the leaves, then wandered through the scattered clearings where grass grew, watered by seepage from the spring.

At last she gave a satisfied grunt. “This will be the clan’s ground until the drought passes,” she said finally. “Now, show me the animals.”

Thakur led the two females behind the bluff overlooking the seamare terraces. He deliberately circled inland, giving the cliffs a wide berth so that the scents of his two companions would not betray their presence to Newt, who patrolled the rocks below.

He brought Ratha and Fessran to another, smaller headland area that overlooked a steep graveled beach. From an overlook above, he stretched out a paw toward the seamares.

Fessran wrinkled her nose at the sight of the creatures sprawled out all over the beach. “They don’t look like much to me. Such lazy lumps. I like a creature with some spirit. And that smell is worse on them than on you.”

“I think you will find they have spirit, especially when you try to taste their flesh,” Thakur retorted.

Fessran wrinkled her nose again, but he ignored her. She wasn’t the one who would decide.

“How would you keep these creatures?” Ratha asked.

“I would do as I saw the young stranger doing. I would gain their trust by defending their young from other meat eaters and take only those who have died.”

“That will take much work and many days and provide only scraps while we do it. I think we should begin the way the first ones of the clan did with herdbeasts: catch and gather them in a place we can keep them.”

“They must live in water,” Thakur argued. “They will die if we drive them onto land and don’t let them swim.”

“Well, we certainly can’t herd them on this beach. One sniff of us and splash—off they’d go.” Ratha turned, scanning the landscape. “Look,” she said, pointing with her muzzle. “There’s another river emptying into this salty lake, and its waters look shallow. Perhaps we could keep the animals there.”

They investigated the river mouth. Thakur judged the water salty enough for seamares, and holes on the muddy shore indicated the presence of the heavy-shelled clams on which the creatures fed. One channel in the river delta had made a deep meander into the side of a cliff, creating a crescent-shaped beach surrounded by sandstone walls on one side and the river on the other. The shallow and slowly flowing water allowed Ratha, Thakur, and Fessran to wade close to the center of the channel before their bellies even got wet.

“This is far enough from the waves so that the creatures couldn’t escape us,” said Ratha. “And the cliffs trap them on all sides but one. It won’t be easy, but we can keep them here.”

Thakur agreed, although the thought of forcing the creatures to move from their graveled sea-beach bothered him a little.

The next task was to capture some seamares and move them. Thakur knew that the Named couldn’t just go down on the beach, surround the creatures, and drive them alongshore to the river mouth. The beach was too narrow for the herders to maneuver, and the seamares could easily escape by diving into the breakers. But if one animal might be lured apart from the rest, the three could surround it.

The problem was how to lure the beasts. Thakur knew they ate large clams, but his efforts to dig one up and open it had so far failed. It was Fessran who pointed out that if the seamares ate such smelly things as fish, clams, and seaweed, they might be tempted by the meat she carried, which by now was also taking on an unmistakable odor.

To everyone’s surprise, the idea worked. Using her treeling’s dextrous paws, Ratha scattered a trail of meat fragments to lure a seamare into ambush. The first creature they captured was small and didn’t put up much of a struggle. With three of the Named surrounding the beast, it humped and heaved itself from the graveled beach upriver to the site Ratha had chosen. The creature arrived, ruffled and blown, but in good enough shape to immediately start rooting in the mud for clams. Leaving Fessran to guard the first captive, Thakur and Ratha went back to bait the trail for another.

Soon a second, larger seamare started the trek to the river beach. This one gave the two herders more trouble.

“By the ticks on my belly, these duck-foots can move fast if they want to,” Thakur yowled as he lunged to block the beast from wheeling and taking off back down the path.

“Watch the tusks,” Ratha called over the seamare’s outraged bellowing. An irritated jab just missed his hindquarters as he skittered away.

“Yes, they’re not as long as herdbeast horns, but they’re down lower, where they can cause more trouble. Yarr, you stinking wave-wallower—go this way, not that!”

Soon there were more seamares than herders on the river beach. Thakur wanted to call a halt, but Ratha and Fessran had gotten excited. The bait was working well, and plenty remained. Both females had long since stopped complaining about the animals’ fishy reek and were stalking and tricking the beasts with eager mischievousness.

Finally Thakur pointed out that if the Named collected too many more, they’d be spending too much effort chasing the creatures out of the river and trying to keep them from escaping back downstream. Reluctantly, Ratha agreed, for it was getting toward sunset. Thankfully, the sea-beasts slept by night, letting one of the three take each watch while the others slept.

The next day, Thakur found Ratha gone, while Fessran watched the seamare herd through sleep-reddened eyes. “How do I know where she’s gone?” the Firekeeper growled irritably. “She said she was going to find some prickly bushes, and no, I don’t have any idea why.”

He found out when Ratha returned, her back laden with thornbrush, with Ratharee holding the branches on her. She also carried several rather gingerly in her mouth. Thakur could see the scratches on her muzzle.

“This may solve the problem of straying wave-wallowers,” she said, dumping the brush and arranging it in a narrow heap as the Named did with firewood. Thakur could see that the prickly branches formed a low but effective barrier.

With his help, she fetched more brush and started to build a low wall. Thakur was dubious at first, but when he saw a seamare lumber up to the construction then retreat from the sharp thorns, he became convinced. They added thorny vines of wild blackberry, extending the barrier out toward the river.

Following Ratha’s confident lead, he helped her build the wall into the lapping shallows. Then he saw her stop and stare in dismay as the gentle current stole every branch she had placed in the water, wafting them away.

She sat down, scratched herself in puzzlement. On her shoulder, Ratharee lifted her ringed tail in a questioning curve.

“Well, the branches need to be held down, somehow,” Thakur began, but he was interrupted by a call from Fessran, who needed help to keep several seamares from humping themselves past her into the river.

Barrier building had to be abandoned for the moment, while the recalcitrant beasts were rounded up and driven back, but Thakur knew Ratha hadn’t given up on the idea.

As soon as she could, she was back at it again. Fessran offered the suggestion that sticks pushed into the river bottom might serve to keep the thornbrush in place, and, after several tries, it worked. Not without cost, however. Thakur had splinters in his pads and thornbark between his teeth by the time the two quit for the day.

Now that Ratha was assured that the spring Thakur found would serve the Named throughout the dry season, she decided to move the herds. She had considered the river where the seamares were kept as another possibility, but the outflow was so sparse that salt water had intruded, turning the river into a narrow arm of the sea. It was ideal for seamares but not other herdbeasts. The three-horns and dapplebacks would be moved to the area about the spring.

As soon as she told Fessran of her decision, the Firekeeper wanted to leave, bearing the good news back to Cherfan and the others. After hearing Fessran grumble about “walking across all the rocks in the world,” Ratha was surprised to see her so eager to make the journey once again.

Perhaps Fessran was starting to get restless, chafing at having to spend a good part of the day watching the captive seamares while Thakur and Ratha extended their brush wall into a corral that opened onto the river. Ratha had no doubt that Fessran would perform her task well and would take no nonsense from anyone. But she knew Fessran well enough to see that clan duty was not the only thing on the Firekeeper’s mind.

After Fessran left, Ratha tackled the task of building a brush wall that would stand in the river’s current. By ramming sticks into the mud-and-gravel bottom and having the treelings weave supple boughs between them, she and Thakur found that they could make a structure that held the seamares in while allowing water to pass through. Ratha tried to adapt the method of lashing sticks together that the Firekeeper student had shown her, although it was difficult to get Ratharee to stop twisting bark strips into tangles once she had started.

As the wall slowly grew, with Thakur’s help, Ratha wanted more seamares within the enclosure. When enough of the corral had been completed so that the beasts would not stray, she talked Thakur into another expedition to capture the beasts.

He was willing as long as they stayed north of the area where the Un-Named one prowled and did not take any that seemed to belong in that area. Another condition was that she disguise her smell by rolling in seamare dung. She grumbled, but she knew Thakur was right. She rolled.

They used the last of the smelly bait to lure more seamares and soon had as many as they could handle. The creatures milled about on the beach and sloshed in the water. Ratha and Thakur were kept busy reinforcing and raising the thornbrush walls.

When they weren’t working on the seamare corral, Thakur showed her how to find things to eat in tidepools and how to glean the seamares’ leavings. She did not like being a scavenger, even for a short while, and she was relieved when Fessran finally showed up at dawn one morning, along with Cherfan and Bira. She looked thin, dusty, but triumphant, leading a string of thirsty dapplebacks and three-horns, along with their equally thirsty herders.

Firekeepers arrived with the herders, bearing the Red Tongue in embers and on torches. Many of the Named looked tired and disgruntled at having to make the move, but no one growled or blamed Ratha, for they knew it was the drought that had forced them from their home ground.

Eagerly Ratha led them all to Thakur’s spring, and she saw that the watering place would serve as well as she had hoped. Even with three-horns and dapplebacks milling and trampling, the flow stayed clear, and the animals drank until they were sated. Then the herders let them scatter to browse, and the rest of the Named sought dens or sleeping places nearby.

At last, when the confusion died down, she sought out Fessran. The Firekeeper was sitting on a rock ledge near the pool, grooming her belly and purring softly to herself. As Ratha approached, she caught something unusual in Fessran’s smell, something sweet and almost milky. But the powerful seamare odor in her own coat interfered with her nose, and she couldn’t tell if the odd scent was just her imagination. She consoled herself by thinking that Fessran would soon be wearing the odoriferous stuff and would smell as bad as she did now.

As she approached, Fessran stopped grooming and lay down. The elusive scent teasing Ratha’s nose vanished as if it had never been. Fessran yawned, looking weary but happy. The strained look on her face seemed to have gone.

“Well, I did it.” She grinned at Ratha. “I helped Cherfan whip that lazy bunch into shape and get them here.”

“No one gave you trouble?”

Fessran licked some new scratches on her muzzle. “Oh, there were a few malcontents—there always are. I had to use a little persuasion, but not much. The sight of the dry streambeds helped change their minds.” She shifted, grimacing and sneezing. “Would you mind sitting a bit farther away, clan leader? I mean no disrespect, but until I get used to that smell... ”

Ratha moved herself, sitting a little apart, while Fessran told her how they had made the journey without losing a single fawn or foal. It suddenly struck her that the Firekeeper was preoccupied by something that had nothing to do with herdbeasts. She could tell by the absent tone in Fessran’s voice and the way she groomed herself.

“Are you still thinking about your treeling?” she asked suddenly.

“What? Oh, Fessree? No. I’m sure she’s surviving without me. No point in fretting, and I have other things to think about.”

A little later Ratha paced away, swinging her tail. When she returned later to ask the Firekeeper something, she found Fessran gone.

She did not have much time to wonder where her friend had disappeared. No sooner had she turned away from the pool below the falls than she saw Thakur trotting up to her. She could tell by the way his whiskers bristled that this wasn’t just a friendly call.

He jogged to a stop, Aree rocking on his back. Ratha lifted her chin, raised her whiskers.

“Ratha, I thought you told the herders not to take any wave-wallowers from the southern beach.”

“I did,” she said mildly.

“Well, they aren’t obeying you,” Thakur said. “I saw several young herders bringing an animal over the rocks that separate our beach from the one Newt stalks.”

Ratha’s tail twitched with irritation. She did not like her instructions to be flouted, even though she had given them to appease Thakur. Privately, she didn’t think that the Un-Named female Thakur called Newt would really miss a few wave-wallowers.

By the time the two backtracked to where Thakur had seen the stolen seamare and then made their way to the corral, the herding students were driving the beast past the brush wall. The herders, all yearlings, looked inordinately proud of themselves. Ratha thought sourly that the creature they had pirated was small and not really worth all the effort. She lost sight of the seamare as it lumbered past the thornbrush wall and mingled with the honking, hooting mass of its fellows.

She was about to tongue-lash the overenthusiastic youngsters when Thakur interrupted, asking if she had tracked the seamare through the brush gate and knew which one it was.

“No,” she admitted, staring across the thornbrush at slick, mud-smeared flanks and swinging tusks. “I lost sight of the creature as soon as it got in.”

Thakur sighed. “Newt isn’t going to like this. I should have stopped those yearlings and returned the beast myself. I also don’t know which others they may have taken.”

“Does it really matter?” Ratha asked. “There are more on her beach than on ours. Surely she won’t miss a few.”

Thakur’s ears twitched back. “Don’t tell me you agree with what the herders did, Ratha!”

“I don’t, and I was going to let them know that when you stuck your whiskers in,” she snapped. “Why is your nape all up about this anyway? Your lame friend has got more of the wave-wallowers than she needs.”

“She knows them all, and she’ll know if one is missing. She has favorites among them.”

At this Ratha grimaced disdainfully. “You may think it’s silly, but she does,” Thakur insisted. “She may tolerate us stealing a few, especially if she thinks they have wandered over from her beach, but if we take the wrong animal, we will have trouble. And I’m afraid we may have already done that.”

“All right,” Ratha said, seeing that he really was worried. “I’ll tell everyone they’d better keep to our territory, or they’ll have more than an Un-Named cripple to worry about.”

She saw Thakur grimace at that and knew she should have chosen her words less recklessly. “I’m sorry, Thakur. She deserves more respect than that. I’ll be sure the herders leave her alone.”

She didn’t like it when Thakur held her gaze with his own, his copper-furred face serious. “Don’t underestimate Newt, Ratha.”

Her tail did an irritated flip. Why was he getting so touchy about Newt, or whoever she was? Abruptly she decided to change the subject and asked him if he’d seen Fessran.

“I caught a glimpse of her going somewhere with Khushi,” Thakur answered.

Ratha padded away. It seemed odd that Fessran was spending so much time with her son. None of the other Named females bothered much with their cubs once they were grown. She often had to scratch in her mind to remember who had birthed whom, on the rare occasions when it mattered. She shook herself and went on her way.

The following day, when she saw that the herdbeasts and the Named had settled after the journey, she gathered up those herders and Firekeepers who could be spared. After teaching them and their treelings how to work sticks and brush together to form a section of wall, she put them to work building the seamare pen.

Although Fessran still lacked a treeling, she made up for it by diligently bringing pieces of driftwood up from the beach and piling them near the wall.

Ratha had the pole-setters place additional sticks alongside the ones she and Thakur had laid. Once more poles were in place she worked alongside them with Ratharee on her back. The treeling held crossmembers where Ratha wanted them and helped to lash these in place. It was wearing work, hard on both Named jaws and treeling hands.

“Don’t you think it’s strong enough?” Fessran asked Ratha. “Watching you grunt and tussle in that miserable river is making me squirm.”

From the shallow water where she was standing, Ratha eyed the wall and the seamares inside. “It needs more brush on top. I want to be sure those duck-footed bellydraggers can’t escape.”

“If you put more on top, it will fall over,” Fessran argued, but Ratha wasn’t in a mood to listen. She slogged her way out to midriver, where the construction crew and their treelings were reinforcing the barrier by shoving sticks and thornbrush into the crude latticework. Not satisfied with how the others were building the wall, she took a tangle of brush in her own mouth and clambered atop the construction.

“Here’s where it should go,” she said, and shoved the mass in the fork of a driftwood branch. As she stretched down to take more thornbrush that was being passed up to her, she felt the whole wall shift alarmingly under her weight. With squalls of dismay, the workers scattered as a section of the barrier toppled over, carrying Ratha and her treeling with it.

With a terrific splash, it fell into the river. Ratha expected a dunking but to her surprise, the woven mass of driftwood and brush held together, acting as a floating platform beneath her. Only her toes got soggy from water seeping through.

After getting over her initial shock, Ratha realized she was drifting downriver. She saw Fessran trotting along the bank, accompanied by several irritated pole-setters yowling insults at their reckless leader for knocking the wall down.

The current wasn’t very strong, and soon Ratha’s make-shift raft grounded on a sandbar. Everyone who wasn’t occupied with keeping seamares from escaping waded in to steady the strange craft and rescue a frightened Ratharee, but Fessran and a few others took the opportunity to make sure Ratha got well splashed, dunked, and pummeled by the time she reached solid ground.

“Wait!” she yowled just as the Named were about to tear the raft apart to use in an attempt to repair the seamare pen. The group drew back, letting her through to examine the thing. She pushed on the craft with a paw, watching how it bobbed and floated. Again she clambered on, scrambling from one end to the other. Yes, it made her feet soggy and had a disconcerting tendency to sink under her weight in certain places, but it had carried her quite a distance.

She hopped off, her whiskers bristling excitedly.

“I know that look,” said Fessran. “Don’t tell me you think we can use that broken piece of the wave-wallower pen.”

“Didn’t you see what happened? It carried me and Ratharee over the water. We didn’t have to swim. I think it could carry more than one of us. Come on, Firekeeper. Let’s both try.”

Gingerly, Fessran made her way aboard, grimacing when Ratha joined her in a gleeful bound, making the raft bounce. “You, clan leader, are still a cub sometimes. Yarr, this thing makes my stomach feel queer.”

“We can ride down the river on it,” Ratha argued.

“You can ride down the river on it. I’ll stick to burning my whiskers with the Red Tongue.” Fessran disembarked, waded to the bank, and shook her feet. “Anyway, we need the sticks to fix the hole you made.”

Reluctantly, Ratha gave up her new discovery, but as she watched the other Firekeepers pull it apart, she fixed the idea in her mind, resolving to build another raft once the pen was finished.