The Bear and the Serpent Read online

  She looked up at the rock. At its apex, at its edge, there was a bulge that she had already marked. There would be the Lion’s lookout, supposedly watching the moon-touched grasslands for just such an attack as this. His attention was back towards the fire, though, watching his fellows having a good time. And the Lion were roaring, just as Feeds had predicted. The Horse messenger’s baggage had plainly contained something to keep them entertained. Maniye had an idea what that was.

  But now to make her entrance. She rolled her shoulders, stretched her spine, and then Stepped into her mother’s shape, into the tiger that was the lion’s cousin. No lion could climb as she could climb; only the leopard, so she had heard, and she had never seen one, nor met the Leopard’s secretive and dark-auspiced people.

  The rock was old: she dug her claws into its history, the marks of the rains that came to the Plains once or twice a year, the gouges of horn and claw, the cracks where the mice and the lizards hid. The rock’s past was a ladder that she climbed, flowing up the stone face of it like a shadow.

  Of course, it was possible to be too good at this, she thought. A little embarrassing to arrive on her own. The Champion would no doubt impress the Lion greatly, so much so that their leader might fancy her pelt for a cloak. She doubted she could hold them all off alone.

  These were all young men, this band of Lions. That was their way, she heard: each Lion village had many strong women hunters, and a few men who ruled them and grew fat off their labours. Excess sons and nephews and cousins were thrown out to bedevil the rest of the Plains, wandering until they either met their dooms or went home for a reckoning with their ageing uncles. It seemed a wasteful way to live, to Maniye, but then she knew the stories the Plains people told about the terrible savages at the Crown of the World. Everyone was everyone else’s monster.

  Besides, was she not taking her own band of unwanted hunters out to find their fates? Her mentor Broken Axe had done the same, when he was young. It was just that the Lions had made the practice a deeper part of their story.

  It turned out one of the Lions was still alert, just not the sentry she was creeping up towards. A human yell turned into a deep, full-throated roar that she virtually felt through the rock itself. The yelping and yipping of the Plains Dogs rose in reply, and then she heard Spear Catcher’s spine-chilling howl, all the bitter frustration of an ageing man with little to show for his years, caught in a wolf’s clear voice.

  The lookout above her started. Already on four feet, he turned and roared his own defiance, and she slithered up the last few yards of stone and fell upon him.

  He must have caught her movement from the corner of his eye, because he rounded on her even as she struck. For a moment she was just swatting at him: a little tiger in the fire-shadow of a heavy-set lion. Then the Champion shouldered its way forward impatiently, and she thrust herself up on her hind legs like a bear, one set of claws scooping the startled Lion out of the way and off the rock entirely.

  She bellowed. The voice of the Champion was a cry out of time, like no beast ever heard by human ears.

  There were a dozen of the enemy there, half of them burly men in skins and leather and stiff linen armour, the rest already taken to their fighting forms, shoulders bristling with new-grown manes, baring their long fangs at her. And though they shied from her at first sight, they were ready for the fight at the second. Enemies of the Lion often called them cowards, willing to fight only when they knew they could win. Yet these homeless youths looked like they would dare anything; they had nothing left to lose.

  She lumbered forwards, using the slope of the rock to pick up speed. She saw the long-boned man in their midst, a noose about his neck to keep him human – that was the Horse messenger. Only in the moment before her charge hit home did she locate Sathewe – the skinny Coyote girl coralled against the fire by one of the Lions, but not restrained, in no immediate danger.

  While the handful in front of her retreated, another leapt at her flank, raking at her with his claws. He connected with her thick hide and the bronze beneath kept him from drawing blood. His weight dragged at her, though, and she rolled to that side, forcing him to leap clear. The Lions in front of her took that as an opportunity, but she was ready for them, meeting them with jaws agape and bellowing, sending them twisting away.

  Then the Plains Dogs and her Wolves were in the camp, and the knot confronting her disintegrated into individual beasts seeking individual fights. Maniye took a moment to catch her breath, and a starved-thin coyote scampered up to her on stick legs, the curve of the animal’s panting mouth contriving to suggest laughter – Sathewe, no doubt already spinning a tale out of the adventure.

  She made her way towards the Horse prisoner, and those ahead of her looked elsewhere to easier targets. Around her she could watch sidelong as Lion fought Dog. The Plains Dogs were a third the size of a grown lion: they fought two, three on one to even the odds, Stepping between human and animal from moment to moment, each taking a turn to nip at the enemy’s heels and to strike with a blade. She saw instantly that they would not have had the numbers to be anything more than a nuisance on their own, despite their leader’s bravado – a quick run through the camp and then away before the Lions could band together to tear into them.

  Or perhaps not: the Lions were slower than she had expected, some still by the fire, and one or two – still human – looking almost bewildered. A litter of clay jars at their feet betrayed them: the Horse messenger had not been taken for the word he was bringing. The Sun River Kingdom of the south had many treasures, so she was told, but amongst the most prized was their beer.

  The fighting was swift and savage, but quarter was given. There were times and places when the Plains people killed each other without qualm, but today those who ran were left to run.

  A Lion challenged her – perhaps he was the leader, for he was the biggest beast there, his mane dark enough to be black in the firelight. He swatted at her muzzle, then tried to hook his paws about her head so he could bite. He was perhaps not used to meeting a bigger predator than himself. She took the sting of his claws – dangerously close to her eye – then reared up out of his reach, slamming her forepaws down at him in a move she had learned from the Bear Loud Thunder. He flinched out of the way, saving his bones, but she caught him with a sideways swipe anyway, drawing stark lines across his pelt.

  Across the fire, Spear Catcher was bowled over by a beast twice his size and she saw the savage jaws lunge in at him. A moment later the biter recoiled, shaking his heavy head. The Lion’s teeth were bronze, but Spear Catcher was a true Iron Wolf. Then the young she-wolf Tiamesh had leapt onto the Lion’s back, biting furiously at his shoulder before springing away. Spear Catcher got back to his feet. Everything about his stance said, I’m too old for this.

  One of the Lion was dead – had taken human shape to shout a warning or a command, perhaps, and an arrow had found his eye. One of the Dogs was down as well, still kicking, but curled into a brindled ball about his guts in a way that told Maniye he was unlikely to be kicking for long. For the rest, the Lions were already deserting their camp site, leaping down from the rock to lose themselves in the night and the sea of grass.

  She Stepped beside the Horse man and cut the rope about his neck, then the bonds that held his hands behind him.

  The leader of the Plains Dogs came trotting up, eventually, to find her with her raiders. Maniye’s people had got away without anything worse than scratches, and Tiamesh had a torn ear that she was holding a wad of wool to. At Maniye’s back, Sathewe and Feeds on Rags were whispering together, plotting mischief as always.

  ‘Champion.’ In his human form the Dog leader was grinning. ‘Come guest with us.’

  ‘I think your home is far from here.’

  ‘Even so, you are welcome.’

  ‘We are guests of the Horse,’ she told him. ‘We must return their man. Some day, perhaps, we will be your guests.’ There was a certain way of talking that they had in the south – especially further south along the river. Maniye was trying to master it, though the words felt awkward in her mouth.

  The Dog leader took that with good grace. It had not escaped Maniye that, had things been different, she could have been trying to recover the Horse man from him, rather than the Lions. They called her north savage and harsh, but here in the Plains everyone seemed to be at war with everyone all the time. Except the Horse, who warred with no one and always had friends, like Maniye’s Wolves, to fight on their behalf.

  ‘You are a sign,’ the Dog told her softly.

  She frowned. ‘What manner of sign?’

  He shrugged. ‘Our wise women say to me, watch for signs in your travels. Here before me, I see what no man has seen in all the days. Is that not a sign?’

  ‘A sign of what?’ she pressed. She was remembering what Loud Thunder, the Bear, had said before she left. His Motherchief had been seeking signs, too. Hesprec of the Serpent had travelled all the north in search of them. Why was the world so taken up with portents?

  ‘The wise women say bad things are coming.’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows how wise they are? But I will tell them I have seen you. Perhaps they will know what you mean.’ He spoke as if she was something he had dreamt, and with enough sincerity that for a moment she felt unreal to herself.

  2

  Maniye and her people had come to Where the Fords Meet on Horse boats down the Sand Pearl river. Here, where the river died, the Horse had made their stronghold. Having turned their back on the infighting of the Plains, they made themselves as hard to attack as possible. The Sand Pearl was a valiant flood when it left the north, broad enough for the flat-bottomed barges of the Horse, cutting straight and true on its southward course away from the highlands that birthed it. Unlike the Tsotec, that grea
ter watercourse that the true south clung to, the Sand Pearl lost faith in itself as it crossed the Plains, spending itself into the dry earth until it foundered in a maze of marshy channels.

  Here the Horse dwelled in a great scattered village of huts and walkways propped on stilts above the water. Here they grew food on floating mats of vegetation. Any attack on the Horse would meet with that treacherous ground; any bold raiders would have to wade and wallow and punt whilst the arrows of the Horse rained down on them. The Horse were the best archers Maniye knew. She had seen their children practising with little bows shaped from the timber they floated down from the north.

  We have that timber, and make few bows. The Wolf, the Tiger, the other people of the Crown of the World fought in their Stepped shapes, and carried blades of bronze and iron to strengthen their teeth and claws. The people of the Horse fought on two legs, and took every advantage they could.

  Dawn was close enough to lighten the sky, when Maniye and her Wolves returned to Where the Fords Meet. In their midst, the messenger was Stepped, a lone mount escorted by predators, with a coyote trailing behind them and a crow spreading his dark wings overhead.

  She bulked out into the Champion’s bear-huge form to enter the domain of the Horse. She felt guilty as she did it; the only other Champion she knew had told her it was not to be used to amuse the idly curious. Still, she was already part of a legend. What harm if she built on it?

  That Alladai would see her was in her mind. She liked Alladai. She respected Alladai. She would not admit to anyone that the tall, clean-limbed Horse man whose boats had brought her south featured sometimes in her dreams. She was the leader of the Iron Wolves, after all. Such fancies were not part of her role.

  Still, she hoped he saw.

  The rest of her followers were here, a score in all. Aside from the Twins they were all born within the Jaws of the Wolf. What she had come seeking with them was breathing space, a time to let the Crown of the World grow used to the idea of what she was. What her followers sought varied, but they all sought something. Nobody undertook a journey like this if they had a settled place in the world. Spear Catcher and his wife were running from lives of ill luck and failed chances, children they had outlived and kin turned against them. Tiamesh saw this as a way of earning a name. Surely nobody could travel so far from home and still come back unchanged.

  The rest of her band got up and took notice as she led her raiders over the high wooden roads of Where the Fords Meet. Some had been lazing in the sun that they were all still growing accustomed to. Others had been wrestling with some of the Horse, teaching and learning in equal measure. Chief amongst these – the man she had left in charge while she hunted – was Moon Eye, a tall and broad-shouldered hunter falling between her and Spear Catcher in years, who had followed her for his own reasons. She had been in two minds, when he came to her, just as she had when Feeds on Rags had told her his real name. Moon Eye was slow of speech, patient, even dull; a man who retreated from fights and arguments that his strength would surely win. She would happily leave him in charge of the rowdy juniors who made up her followers when they were lounging about in the midst of the Horse village, but never in a fight. Moon Eye was a blade without a hilt, and he knew it. He was a man who shied from anger as if it was a plague, because he knew it might infect him.

  She abandoned the rescued Horse messenger to his people and plunged in amongst her own, still holding the Champion’s shape. They ran alongside her on four feet, or brushed their hands briefly against her pelt, renewing their fealty. Then she was human again, and apart from Sathewe, the smallest of them there.

  Here were all her hunters, her warriors, but she didn’t see any of the talkers. Moon Eye nodded towards one of the odd little roofless rooms dotted here and there, which the Horse used for meeting places. In the north, anywhere without a roof was outside, because that was where the rain happened. She had not seen rain in this land, but the Horse said it was so fierce when it came here, that inside and outside were barely different.

  She had brought more than a warband south; there were three priests in the group. One she was repatriating to her home; one was a traveller from the north seeking the counsel of the wise ones of the Sun River Nation; one was her father.

  Kalameshli Takes Iron sat brooding while the others talked. He was a man who had lived his life in the Wolf’s Shadow. His lore was the Wolf’s lore – he knew the secrets of iron, rituals of passage, the balance of power between the Wolf tribes and the other powers of the north. None of it was wisdom that would carry him far round here. He was lost, more than any of the rest of them, and she could tell that every new thing struck him like an arrow. Of them all, he least wanted to be here, but if he was in the north, and not standing in her shadow, then the Tiger would kill him. Looking at his sullen, sour old face, Maniye sometimes wondered whether she should have saved him at all. He seemed a man who had outlived his time.

  Back in the Crown of the World, when he had talked, others listened. Here others talked, and she thought he was doing his best not to listen to what they had to say.

  Hesprec was talking. Maniye had heard her voice as she approached – the rhythms she had first heard from an old, old man’s lips, now in the voice of a girl younger than she was. The Serpent had their own ways, and time could not kill them, but only renewed them in a different skin.

  She found Hesprec sitting cross-legged, animatedly lecturing two old women of the Horse and the third priest that Maniye had brought with her from the north. And Kalameshli too, though the old Wolf never seemed to care what was said, so long as it was not said behind his back where he could not hear it.

  Hesprec had gone north seeking wisdom, where Kalameshli had tried to sacrifice her to the Wolf. Others had been more forthcoming though; everywhere Hesprec travelled she had gathered prophecies and left warnings in her wake. Now she retold the stories of the north for the Horse women, and they nodded solemnly.

  They too had heard of portents of disaster, but what could be done? Something terrible approached, but none could say from where. Would some tribe of the Plains rise to prominence in a tide of blood? Would there be a resurgence of the Rat cult, the gnawers of bones? Always Hesprec shook her head. ‘It is as if,’ she would say, ‘what is coming is so far beyond our experience that we cannot see it. It comes from a direction we do not even have a name for.’

  All very ominous, if not useful, thought Maniye.

  The other priest there, the third who had come south with them, was a man with a painted face: grey with a stark white band across his eyes. The sight of it never failed to spark a twitch of fear in Maniye’s stomach, as though here was the likeness of some ancient terror that history had forgotten, but that was still remembered somewhere in her soul. His name was Grey Herald and he was not of her warband. He was of the Eyrie, of the Owl; his purpose in coming south was never explicitly stated. He conferred often with Hesprec, deferring to the young southern girl with an automatic respect that Hesprec returned. Just as his face made Maniye afraid, so did his presence. He brought back all those fireside tales of How We Came to These Lands, which were born out of a terror – a people fleeing for their very existence. The Owl and the Serpent had been separated for centuries by all the miles that lay between the Tsotec and the Crown of the World. They had only one thing in common, and that was when their distant ancestors – or perhaps it was their gods – had banded together with one other to face a terrible ancient foe. Seeing the Owl now at Hesprec’s side sent a shiver down Maniye’s spine.

  The Serpent girl glanced up and grinned brightly as Maniye approached, breaking off from what she was saying, standing smoothly from her cross-legged seat. ‘I see success in your face,’ she noted.

  Maniye nodded. ‘One Horse trader will not be food for Lions. I thought they’d be fiercer.’

  ‘These things are known: the Lion is fiercest when there are no enemies,’ Hesprec said sagely, and the Horse elders chuckled. ‘And here is your Horse come to thank you.’

  Maniye started around, seeing Alladai striding over. ‘He is not my Horse,’ she said hastily. Hesprec was grinning – when Maniye had known the Serpent as an old man, there had been no teeth between those pale and withered lips. That grin was entirely new.