The Named: The Complete Series

Chapter Nineteen

In the settling dust, Thakur stood over Quiet Hunter, nosing him gently. With a grunt of surprise, he said, “I thought he was dead, Ratha, but he’s not. Maybe I can help him.”

Ratha, with one paw around her daughter, said, “Thistle came back. Maybe he can, too.”

“No,” Thistle cried, her voice muffled because her nose was once more buried against Ratha’s chest. “Maybe I can come back, but Quiet Hunter can’t. He knows no trails other than the ways of the song. For him … everything is ended.”

And you cry out in agony because you want to help him just as I want to help you, Ratha thought.

Ratha was not sure whether she felt stunned, shocked, saddened, or relieved by what had happened. She was, for the moment, thankful that the hunters were too stricken and confused to cause trouble for the Named, although she knew that might end soon. Right now it was Thistle who needed her badly.

Her daughter’s eyes were filled with agony as she gazed at Quiet Hunter. “Their pain … his pain … my fault,” Thistle moaned. “Showed his people … bad way to kill face-tails. Didn’t mean to. But couldn’t hide from True-of-voice. Became part of the song, but learning not complete enough.”

The words were jumbled, but Ratha understood them. Firmly she answered, though her voice was threatening to shake as much as Thistle’s, “It wasn’t your fault. I won’t let you blame yourself.”

“Happened … because I became one of them.”

“It happened because of what you are and what they are. I was the one who said you could try. And it worked, Thistle. You became one who could walk on both trails, theirs and ours. So we could speak instead of fighting.”

“Cared much … for Quiet Hunter. Didn’t want to hurt him.”

“I know,” Ratha said softly. “Thakur is trying to heal him. ”

Thistle’s voice broke in a sob as she watched Thakur crouching over Quiet Hunter. “Kindness … caring … from the Named, even Thakur … not enough. Only the song can heal Quiet Hunter. Song died with True-of voice.”

Again Ratha drew Thistle to her.

Suddenly Thistle gave a strange gasp, and her pupils widened. She pulled away from Ratha. “No … Can’t be. Thought it came again … an instant. No. Imagining because I want it. Not real. Only hope.”

“What is it?”

“The song. Thought I … heard…. No. Can’t be. Can’t be. Not if True-of-voice is dead.”

Looking at the intense expression on her daughter’s face, Ratha wondered if Thistle’s longing was responsible for what she now sensed. That would be one way to face the situation. Yet she had learned enough about her daughter to know that Thistle would not delude herself.

Thistle gave an odd little twitch, as if something had touched her. She looked to her mother, a question forming in the depths of her eyes.

Ratha looked back, her gaze steady. “You are all assuming that True-of-voice is dead. Maybe he isn’t.”

A tangle of conflicting thoughts made Ratha’s belly churn as she followed Thistle to the edge of the cliff where True-of-voice had fallen. Things were happening too fast. She felt as though she were being jerked one way and then another.

It had been easy to find sympathy for Quiet Hunter’s people when she thought that the source of their power and direction was gone. In the instant that they had become vulnerable, they were no longer alien, no longer enemy. The Named, too, had experienced loss. At least they had that much in common.

Now, with the chance that True-of-voice still lived, Ratha felt that she was on much more treacherous ground. She could no longer return to her previous stance of viewing Quiet Hunter’s people as completely alien and easy to hate. Now things were more complex. Thistle and Quiet Hunter had shown that there was shared ground with her own people. Ratha could not and would not deny that.

Yet if True-of-voice lived, the leader of the Named would have to be on her guard. She had to keep the interests of her own clan foremost. The hunters had already shown that they could be frighteningly powerful. And if there was a chance that they could regain True-of-voice …

This is not going to be easy. I want to help Thistle and Quiet Hunter without betraying the Named.

She looked ahead to where Thistle crouched, peering down over the cliff edge. Near Thistle the ground and the scrub bushes were trampled or torn up. There were dark blood spatters drying in the dust.

“Here. This is where he fell,” Thistle said, her voice flat.

Ratha felt a shiver as she passed between blank-eyed hunters who could only stare at her dully. She felt a surge of scorn mixed with revulsion. They had all given up. Just like that. Take away their powerful leader, and their initiative died.

In that way, they were very different from the Named. If my people lost me, they would grieve, but they would choose someone else and go on.

And even before the other clan had confirmed that their leader was really dead, they had fallen apart. Thistle was right. These people seemed to get stuck or paralyzed in the strangest ways. Didn’t anyone even look to see if True-of voice might have landed on a ledge or something below?

She found herself curling one side of her lip up over her fangs. How could she respect these people? They really could not think for themselves. They had to be told what to do. Even trivial things. Everything was ruled by True-of-voice, through the strange, unifying bond of something Thistle could only call “the song. ”

I hate it. I hate even the idea of it.

Ratha crouched beside Thistle and peered over, studying the rock face that dropped away from the edge beneath her feet. It looked pretty sheer … yet there were some ledges. And some bushes growing right out of the rocks, which someone might catch and cling to in desperation. And halfway down there was a shelf and something dark on the shelf….

Ratha’s heart began to pound. Could it be? Or was her imagination painting that sprawled cat-form on the rocks below?

The shape lay still. It would do the hunters no good to recover True-of-voice if he was dead.

But Thistle had felt … something. A brief echo of the song? Was it just self-delusion or was it real? Ratha knew her kind were tough. She herself had survived wounds and falls. Thistle had once run right off a cliff during one of her strange fits and had not even been badly hurt.

There was only one way to find out whether True-of-voice still clung to life.

Ratha herself could not run the paths to where the answer lay.

Her eyes met her daughter’s. She did not have to ask Thistle to leave the trails of the Named for those of Quiet Hunter’s people. She could see that Thistle was already journeying inward, seeking the source of the song.

And at last, when she came back, her eyes were wide with astonishment. “It is there,” she whispered. “Oh, so faint. But it is there. True-of-voice lives.”

* * *

Thistle was not the only one who could sense the flickering flame of life on the ledge below, although she was the most sensitive, Ratha noted. Only after she had led Ratha to the cliff edge did some of the hunters start to drift in the same direction. True-of-voice’s feeble call had reached them too—Ratha could tell by the startled expressions of hope that broke through the dull resignation.

But his touch was weak and sporadic. Ratha could almost read the resurgence and waning of his strength in the eyes of his people. And in her daughter’s eyes as well.

Gradually the hunters at the top of the cliff gathered in a cluster, as if they were moving as close as they could to True-of-voice. Those at the bottom, who had begun halfheartedly eating the carcasses of the slaughtered face-tails, abandoned their kills and crowded to the base of the cliff, staring up at their marooned and dying leader.

To Ratha’s surprise, Thakur’s skill, or the tenuous return of the song, or both, had revived Quiet Hunter enough so that the young male could stagger to the cliff edge. Ratha had an instant of alarm when she thought he was going to stumble right over, but both Thistle and Thakur blocked Quiet Hunter and pushed him firmly back.

True-of-voice’s people gazed down at their leader with forlorn expressions and drooping whiskers. Even those whose age should have given them some wisdom looked as lost as the yearlings. And at the bottom of the rock face, more of the grieving clan looked up in hopeful and hopeless longing.

They know they can’t reach him, Ratha thought. They know he is dying. They can feel it.

For Ratha it was a heartbreaking yet eerie scene as more and more of the hunters gathered, as if to hold vigil for their lost leader.

No. He is more than their leader, Ratha thought. He is their life.

To command such devotion … Ratha felt a strange flash of envy toward the distant True-of-voice. To be so loved … without hesitation or question.

She glanced at her daughter, who was sitting beside the crouching Quiet Hunter. Thistle had laid her paw gently on his back, as if to make sure that he would not lean too far over the cliff in his attempt to get closer to True-of-voice.

Thistle was trembling, her eyes closed. She who could be safe “outside” had chosen to go within, to share the grief and suffering of Quiet Hunter’s people. Yet she was not totally entranced, for she pressed down harder on her paw each time a surge of grief made Quiet Hunter try to crawl dangerously close to the drop-off.

Ratha found herself wishing that she had even a tiny part of Thistle’s strange gift … so that she, too, could share in the powerful emotion that was binding the other clan even closer to their leader. Yet she knew she would always be watching from outside. Even if she had the ability, she would not use it.

The gift of the Named, the one that had so shaped her people, was wakeful awareness. Ratha knew it was so precious to her that she would fight and kill to preserve it. She already had.

We who are Named will never walk in dreams, she thought, with a strange mixture of pride and sorrow. Except for Thistle.

She felt someone coming alongside her. Familiar fur rubbed against her own and a wonderfully familiar smell replaced the odors of mourning strangers. Thakur. Wonderfully Named, sensible, wide-awake Thakur.

She leaned against him with a grateful sigh. For a while he seemed to be content to provide quiet companionship, but then he spoke in a calm, yet serious voice. “Clan leader, we probably should take Thistle and back off a bit. I’m starting to get some resentful looks.”

“I don’t think she’ll come. Not while Quiet Hunter—” Ratha broke off. Yes, some of the hunters were sending distinctly black looks in their direction. She knew how easily grief could flare into rage. And it could be argued that the Named had indirectly caused the tragedy.

“All right,” she heard Thakur say. “Thistle should be safe, but it would be better if we retreated.”

Ratha did not want the reminder that as long as True-of-voice remained alive, the hunters were a threat.

She agreed to back off, but insisted on staying near enough to keep an eye on her daughter. They took cover in some brush that had not been trampled.

“How long do you think they will stay?” she asked Thakur.

“Until True-of-voice dies,” he replied softly.

“It may take days!”

“I know. He was strong.”

After those words Thakur was quiet for so long that Ratha was startled when he spoke again.

“Clan leader, how do you feel about this?”

She found it very difficult to answer him. On the one side, the Named would benefit if True-of-voice’s death destroyed the hunters. No one would stand in the way and the Named could take all the face-tails they wanted. On the other, she understood too well the wrenching impact of the tragedy.

“It helps us,” she said at last. “If only Thistle weren’t caught up in it.”

Thakur looked toward the other clan. “Thistle told me that their leaders are usually older and have cubs that can succeed them. True-of-voice had a mate, but she was killed before she had her first litter.”

“This must have happened before,” Ratha protested. “They can’t be so ridiculously vulnerable or they wouldn’t have survived.”

“Maybe things are changing for them, clan leader.” Perhaps things are. And perhaps we are part of the change. The idea was not comforting.

She had a sudden odd thought. Would I help them if I could?

She stared out at True-of-voice’s people. They were drawn so strongly by the need for their leader that they risked falling from the cliff. And her daughter was sitting among them, one paw still on the male called Quiet Hunter.

I don’t know.

* * *

The vigil for True-of-voice continued. Weariness at last made Ratha and Thakur withdraw to their own camp, but the following day, she moved the base so that she could be closer to Thistle. She and Bira were careful to site it downwind of the mourning clan so that the smoke of the Red Tongue would not alarm them.

Although they are so wrapped up in True-of-voice that they wouldn’t notice, she thought as she helped Bira gather tinder for the fire.

The next question Ratha thought of was one she had trouble answering. How long would the group remain there? Certainly until True-of-voice died; but what would happen once they were leaderless?

She suspected that they would continue with the vigil, even after it had become pointless. Without direction, they might stay there indefinitely. And Thistle—how long would Thistle stay with them?

Probably as long as Quiet Hunter survives, she thought, feeling her throat tighten. She had learned how painful it was to lose someone beloved. Ratha’s chosen mate, and Thistle’s father, Bonechewer, had died in the struggle between the Named and their enemies. Now her daughter would soon know the same loss.

She tried to shake herself free of the impending tragedy. She had to look ahead, into the future. The Named had come to capture face-tails. The hunters had blocked them. Now, with the other clan paralyzed and distracted, there would be no more interference.

At an evening gathering around the Named campfire, everyone talked about what to do next. Khushi felt that the Named should make another try to capture a face-tail. The five of them had already been here far longer than intended. Fessran and the others would be starting to worry. Bira agreed. She was also getting restless.

Thakur, however, urged caution. The hunters, he said, might not be as paralyzed as they seemed. Grief and frustration could easily ignite into rage. If the bereaved group did not lash out against the Named directly, they might well take out their anger on the Named one who remained among them—Thistle.

Ratha, torn, agreed on a compromise. On the following day the Named would prepare for another attempt to capture a face-tail, but the hunt itself would not take place until the day after.

She needed to find a way to either get Thistle back from the hunters or minimize the threat to her daughter. Given Thistle’s determination, she wouldn’t return until True-of-voice died. Or Quiet Hunter.

If she even comes back at all. She may hate me for letting this happen to the hunters and then not doing anything to help. But I have no choice. Or do I?

* * *

Before Ratha could make any definite plans or carry them out, however, the hunters showed that they might be grief-stricken, but not rendered completely helpless.

The morning after the campfire meeting, Ratha woke to find Khushi and Thakur gone. Sounds of yowling and spitting from the bottom of the cliff told her that the situation had erupted into a fight.

Telling Bira to take a torch and follow, she galloped toward the foot of the cliff, where the second group of hunters was gathered, waiting for the death of their leader. Remembering Thakur’s warning, she feared the worst.

Before she and Bira were even halfway there, a brown streak shot past her and down the trail. It was Khushi, running as if all the hunters were after him. An instant later, there was the flash of a copper coat, and Thakur dashed into view.

Bira, her torch burning fiercely in her jaws, leaped forward to attack any enemy that might be pursuing him.

“No!” Ratha heard Thakur yowl. “Run. Don’t fight. They won’t go far from True-of-voice.”

Although Ratha felt ready for a good scrap, she turned around, and Bira followed.

As the three fled together down the trail, Ratha cantered abreast of Thakur, asking what had happened.

“It was that idiot Khushi,” Thakur panted. “He tried to take some meat from a face-tail carcass.”

They caught up with Khushi near the camp. The scout was abashed, yet defiant.

“I was hungry,” he confessed. “And I was tired of eating grouse. The face-tail meat was just lying there, attracting vultures. I didn’t think they would care. They weren’t eating it.”

“So you sneaked in there and got the hunters all stirred up,” Ratha snarled. “I should shred your ears and maybe a few more parts!”

Khushi looked sheepish. “I—I didn’t think they cared. They didn’t seem to notice me. At least at first. Then, yarr! They were all over me!”

“And you would have been another piece of meat for the vultures if Thakur hadn’t gone in after you.”

“I guess I would have,” the young scout said shakily. Turning almost shyly to Thakur, he said, “I’m grateful, herding teacher. I don’t know why I thought I could get away with it. Perhaps it was because they didn’t seem to notice me, even when I was right at the kill. Then all of a sudden …” He trailed off.

“They don’t give warning signals,” said Thakur shortly, licking a deep scratch on his foreleg. “That is why what you did was so dangerous.”

Ratha interrupted. “We can’t stay here talking. I want to make sure your stupid blunder didn’t make the hunters turn on Thistle.”

Khushi’s eyes opened wide. “Oh no! I didn’t realize … Well, she’s in the other group at the top of the cliff, isn’t she?”

“Scout, next time try thinking with your brain, not your guts. Guts are for stuffing with food and making dung. Not for thinking with,” Ratha said brusquely. “Remember that the next time.”

Khushi gulped. “I—I’m sorry, clan leader. I hope Thistle is safe.”

“So do I,” Ratha said curtly.

With Khushi, Bira, and Thakur close behind, she headed for the trail to the cliff top.

* * *

Sitting among True-of-voice’s people, her paw still on Quiet Hunter, Thistle felt her exhaustion and desperation grow as True-of-voice’s song faded.

It had changed several times during the night. First it had spoken of suffering, then of fear for the fate of those it was abandoning. Early in the morning there had also been a strong flash of rage at the doings of the strangers, and Thistle feared that her mother had led the Named across some forbidden boundary.

Now the song had changed for the final time. Now it was saying farewell.

It had grown so weak that many could not hear it. Quiet Hunter was among them. He still lay, like many others, with his nose at the cliff edge. He was no longer trying to crawl over. The call that drew him had faded from his mind. Thistle kept her paw on his back, to keep him beside her and to tell him wordlessly that she still heard the waning thread of the song.

As long as he understood, he would fight to stay alive. As long as he knew that the song continued, even in someone else’s mind, he would not bury himself in the lost blackness of his own.

Thistle wondered how much longer he would struggle if she kept her paw on him after the song had faded out completely. Would it be worth having him beside her for a little more time if she had to lie to him?

No, she thought, and the paw on Quiet Hunter’s back trembled, for the song was getting harder to hear.

She caught glances from some of the others around her. She knew they were watching her, waiting for the moment she would take her paw from Quiet Hunter’s back. The looks were starting to get resentful, and unspoken questions seemed to gather in the air around her.

Why can she still hear True-of-voice when we cannot? We are his people—why do we have to listen to an outsider?

Don’t know where I got this gift. Never wanted it, she answered back silently. She did not speak aloud lest it distract her. Even thinking the words loosened her grip on the last fading vestiges of the song, and she had to scramble wildly to keep hold of it.

And now the mutters were starting.

“The song is not heard. True-of-voice is dead.”

“That one says he is not dead. The paw is on Quiet Hunter.”

“The paw does not work. The tongue does not work. They say things are so when they are not. That is a bad thing.”

“That one made the first face-tail fall off a cliff. The face-tail died. True-of-voice saw. Then the song commanded that other face-tails be killed that way.”

“The song changed because of what that one did. It caused hurt. True-of-voice is lost.”

“That one” felt her fur start to prickle in apprehension. Her ears twitched back. She wished she could speak her feelings as clearly as she thought them. Was all a mistake. Never meant to show True-of-voice anything. Was all an accident. When I jumped off the bluff, the face-tail followed.

“The song would not cause hurt. Those who hear would not cause hurt. Outsiders do. That one has caused hurt. That one is an outsider, a stranger.”

Thistle felt her eyes starting to flame with rage. Whose fault was it that the tragedy happened? Who chose to copy her, even though the face-tail’s death was an accident ? True-of-voice himself. He made all the decisions for the group. He laid his will on his people. He had created his own downfall.

She struggled to put away the anger and the urge to protest aloud. It would do no good. And distractions would only hasten the moment when she lost the last tenuous filament of the song and had to lift her paw from Quiet Hunter’s back.

“Those who stay with harmful ones also cause hurt. Quiet Hunter stays with the stranger.”

This time Thistle could not help turning her head to give the speaker a hard stare. She could accept the slights against herself, but not against Quiet Hunter. He had done nothing wrong. And he was, perhaps, enduring more than any of them, for he refused to take refuge in rage and hatred.

Oh, gentle one, beloved one. Wish you would get angry. Even anger against me, I could bear. Would know then that you choose to struggle rather than suffer.

She heard more mutters. Those who were sitting near her drew away.

“She killed True-of-voice. Drive her out.”

“Drive Quiet Hunter out, too. He is with her.”

Tension and fear snapped Thistle’s concentration. She felt the song slip away. It was no good to pretend.

Quickly she bent to whisper in Quiet Hunter’s ear. “Can’t hear song anymore. Leader isn’t dead. Just can’t reach him. Everyone so angry, noisy. Understand?”

Dully he replied, “It is understood.”

She took her paw from his back just as one of the others took an aggressive step toward her. The low background mutter grew into a rumble, then a roar.

“Drive her out! Drive him out!”

Drive us out from what? she thought, wishing she could speak to them as eloquently as she did to herself. You have nothing left. All you had was True-of-voice, and he will soon be gone.

She suddenly felt a deep pity for the hunters. Forlorn, lost, they were reaching for anything that might comfort them. Even hate.

Calmly she said, “Leader still lives. But you so noisy, angry. Makes him hard to hear.”

“Hear her speak!” someone yowled. “The song does not know those words. Stranger! Stranger! Slayer of the song!”

Thistle had seen how the creature the Named called the Red Tongue could spread swiftly through dry wood. With equal speed rage flared up in the group as they yowled and chanted the same words over and over. “Stranger, stranger, slayer of the song. Bleed for True-of-voice. Die for True-of-voice.”

Feeling her fur rising all over, Thistle backed away from those closing in on her. “Will go,” she snarled. “But leave Quiet Hunter alone.”

“No. He has been made a stranger.”

“He is mated to the slayer of the song.” The voices were ugly. Teeth were starting to show.

Before Thistle could say anything else, claws flashed in a stroke across Quiet Hunter’s side. Her own rage leaped up and it was all she could do to keep from flinging herself at the attacker.

If I fight, I’ll die. If I leave him, he’ll die. With her jaws, she grabbed Quiet Hunter’s scruff. Startled by the sudden pain of the claw slash, he was fighting his way out of his trance. Someone else raked his flank. He screamed and shuddered, but whirled to face them, jerking away from Thistle’s hold.

“No, run!” she hissed at him. “With me. Away.”

The look of horror that he gave her told her that the idea of leaving his people was so shattering that he was paralyzed.

“Hunters will kill you,” she cried, and rammed her body into him, forcing him to stagger a few steps away.

Her heart cried out for him. He had done nothing wrong except allow her to care for him.

The look in Quiet Hunter’s eyes told Thistle that he knew he had no choice and, unfairly or not, he was being cast out. On top of the pain of losing the song, he was losing everything else he knew.

Fending off flurries of slashes and bites, he backed away until he was alongside Thistle. She could barely meet his stricken glance.

“So wrong. Because of me,” she whispered.

“Life here is ended,” Quiet Hunter said, his voice dead. “Lead, Thistle.”

And when she bounded away, he followed.

* * *

As Ratha galloped along the upper reaches of the cliff trail, she heard the sound of someone descending. The noises of fighting had already drifted to her from above, making her belly jump with fear for her daughter.

She was about to leave the trail and leap into the bushes when she recognized the pattern of the approaching footsteps.

“Thistle,” she said.

Thakur, running beside her, cocked his ears. “Somebody’s with her.”

“Or chasing her.” Ratha felt a growl creep into her voice. She readied herself to defend her daughter if necessary.

Rocks broke loose on the switchback above, and Ratha saw a pair of sea-green eyes glow. Another pair, golden yellow, shone from the face of the form behind her.

“Who is that?” Khushi hissed in surprise.

“I can guess,” Ratha heard Thakur answer. “Quiet Hunter.”

But Ratha was looking only at the sea-green eyes and smelling the scent of her daughter as Thistle came down the last stretch of trail. Then a familiar set of whiskers brushed hers; a small, sinewy body rubbed briefly alongside ; and a voice breathed a single word: “Mother.”

Ratha felt a warm tingling sweep over her as she rubbed her head against Thistle’s flank, eyes closed in happiness. “My cub. My strong, brave, clever daughter.”

“Is anyone following you two?” Thakur asked.

“No,” Thistle replied. “Hunters don’t go far from True-of-voice.”

“So he is still alive?” Ratha said, surprised.

“Think so. Everyone around me noisy, angry. Couldn’t hear him anymore. Chased me away. Chased Quiet Hunter too. Wasn’t right.”

Ratha saw Thistle turn to her companion. The male with the yellow-gold eyes had been silent, but the look in those eyes told Ratha more than any words.

He has been torn out of his world and thrown into ours. I have never seen anyone look so lost.

“Resting place not far,” she heard Thistle say to him in a gentle tone of voice her daughter rarely used. “Can keep going?”

“Can. Have to,” he answered.

Thistle gave him an encouraging lick. “Know how hard for Quiet Hunter. Care. Very much.”

“The pace can be kept slow,” Ratha offered, trying to omit any words that would jar Quiet Hunter. “No one is following.”

“Weariness is not in the paws. Weariness is in the place behind the eyes.” Quiet Hunter’s voice was remote.

His last words completely baffled Ratha. She decided that it would be better to let Thistle talk to him, at least for now.

At a slow trot, she set off toward the camp.