Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

“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 getused to that smell… ”