Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

By midday the stark cliffs had given way to friendlier country that hosted river valleys and winding estuaries. As Thakur descended with Aree from the clifftops, he saw sandy shores and mudflats. Droves of stilt-legged shorebirds rested or waded there, probing the bottom with their bills.

Some of these birds were so odd that he halted to gaze at them. He knew the long, sharp bills of herons and the broad ones of ducks, but here he saw beaks that curved up, down, or even sideways.

The shorebirds looked so clumsy and gawky that he was tempted to stalk one. But Aree would be in the way, and there was no convenient tree where she could wait safely until he had finished his hunt.

At one estuary, there was a place that looked shallow enough to ford. There he tried the water, but gagged at the briny taste. Disappointed, he waded across, the current tugging at his legs, while Aree made wordless treeling noises as to what she would do if he got her wet. Shaking his paws dry on the far side, he found himself behind a line of scrub-covered dunes. He climbed them and stood looking out on a crescent beach that reached to a rocky headland.

He had set one paw into the crusted sand when a swell of noise rose above the soft wailing of the wind. Abruptly he froze, ears swiveling to catch and identify the sound. It was a mixture of animal cries: grunts, bellows, screeches. What made him turn from his intended path was a faint but unmistakable caterwaul that sounded like one of the Named in a squabble.

He listened, his ears strained far forward, his muzzle pointing toward the rocky terraces that formed the promontory north of the beach.

There it was again. Could one of Ratha’s scouts have gone astray and ended up here? He doubted it, but he had to make sure. Rather than follow the sweep of the beach, he decided to circle back behind and climb up the bluff, where he could peer down at the rocks and ledges below.

Soon he was trotting through the short grass and scrub brush of the headlands, heading for the point. He could hear more clearly the commotion of the fight going on among the rocks below. Screeching, yowling, and a powerful roar made him quicken his pace, but it was the female voice rising in a battle cry that made his whiskers stand on end.

He broke into a canter, jolting Aree along. Behind an outcropping of sandstone, he slithered to a stop and peered down onto the wave-cut terraces and tumbled rocks that spilled out from the point in a natural jetty. In a cove along the spit, he saw a female of his own kind facing a huge black-and-white-crested eagle. Nearby was a large web-footed creature. Close to the bird lay a smaller animal that looked like a youngster.

At first he thought the strange female was fighting for her own life against the eagle and readied himself to charge down into the fray. But he saw that the bird hopped toward the small creature every chance it could get, while the female beat it away. When she abruptly turned and nosed the clumsy young animal over a lip of rock and out of the bird’s reach, Thakur realized this was no simple conflict of hunter and hunted. This stranger, whoever she was, fought to defend the young of the sea-beast just as Named herders protected dappleback foals and three-horn fawns.

Abruptly the fight ended. With a great clapping of wings, the bird lifted and flapped away. Thakur peered hard at the stranger, trying to see if she were clan-born or one of the more intelligent among the Un-Named, but he failed.

Her rust-black and orange coloration was unlike anything he had seen before. She seemed to be limping. He thought at first that the bird had wounded her, but as he studied her closely, he realized her three-legged walk was habitual, and he guessed that the drawn-up foreleg must be permanently lame.

Thakur wondered if what he’d seen was only his imagination. Could it be that his training as a herder and his work as a teacher made him misinterpret the stranger’s behavior? Was he seeing only what he expected to see? Well, he could hardly have expected this! He watched the stranger wend her way among the odd, lumpy sea-creatures, their calmness convincing him that they knew her and had grown accustomed to her presence.

The stranger’s smell was faint at this distance, but the trace of it he could catch was not clan scent. Curious now, he cast about until he found a scent-mark she had made on the bluff and inhaled the odor. No, she wasn’t from the clan, nor was she of the Un-Named, who left their traces on hunting trails.

Thakur toyed with the idea of going down to meet this intriguing stranger, but something made him hesitate.

She must be from the fringes of the Un-Named, he decided, a product of a mating between a clan member and one of the Un-Named, just as he and his brother, Bonechewer, were. If so, she might be friendly, but she also might be dangerous. Though crippled, she had managed to beat off a bird bigger than she was. Thakur wasn’t sure he wanted to confront her directly and certainly not with Aree on his back.

Instead, he watched her, being careful to keep downwind so she wouldn’t smell him. He noted the trails she took through the terraces and rocks. If he scent-marked a shrub or boulder along her way, then he could announce himself in a casual fashion and see from a distance what her response would be.

He put his plan into action the following day. After spraying several shrubs and rubbing his chin on a boulder, he sent Aree to safety in the branches of a wind-gnarled cypress and hid himself above the path.

Soon he heard footfalls in the rhythm of his quarry’s three-legged gait. He peered from his hideaway for the first close-up view of the stranger. He was not prepared for the odd little face that appeared around the edge of a boulder. None of the Named had anything like her markings in orange and rusty black. An inky band across the lower part of her face emphasized the lightness of her eyes.

Thakur had never seen such eyes. An iris of milky green swirled about each slit pupil, giving the stranger a gaze that seemed distracted and diffuse. Yet her stare had an unsettling quality. The cloudiness at first made him think she might be blind, but the sharp definition of her pupils and the way she made her way without using her whiskers to touch things convinced him she could see.

The stranger’s ears flicked back, and her neck extended as she caught his scent. He saw her upper lip curl back, revealing short, sharp fangs without signs of wear. She took one limping step toward the bush he had sprayed and then went rigid. A look of terror and rage shot through her eyes. Reeling backward as if she’d been struck, she crumpled into a whimpering heap, her good forepaw shielding her face. Shudders racked her, throwing her on her side, where she fought and thrashed against some unseen enemy.

Thoroughly bewildered, Thakur crept from his hideaway. He had seen and smelled many reactions to his scent-marking, but none as dramatic or frightening as this! An irrational sting of guilt hit him for daring to place his mark in her path.

The young female lay on her side, pedaling weakly with three feet as she stared ahead. Her head arched back and she stared without seeing. As the paroxysm spent itself, her limbs stilled and her eyes closed. She lay limply. When Thakur pawed her, she wobbled like a freshly killed carcass.

Numbed by astonishment and disbelief, he went to her head and stared down at her. Part of him insisted that it was coincidence; she had sniffed his mark just as the fit struck her. No. He had seen too clearly the shock and fright that had flashed through the cloudiness of her eyes in that instant before she fell.

She took quick, struggling breaths that jerked her rib cage. Thakur himself took a sharp breath of relief. As her breathing steadied, he felt his panic drain away. Whatever the cause of this attack, it would run its course. Unable to sit still, he paced around her.