Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

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.”