Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

Shifting restlessly, she raked the dune. Sand ground under her claws. And then she watched again, this time fixing her gaze on the intruders themselves as they worked to set the last stakes in place before bundling them with thorns. She saw how the cats struggled, often getting splinters in their jaws and blunting their fangs while bringing heavy sticks to midriver and setting them in place. Sometimes they set a pole wrong, or a surge of current from the stream pushed the stake over.

Often she saw two or three of the strangers, coats muddy and soggy, hanging on to a pole with their claws and trying to sink the end deep into the mud bottom by their combined weight. Half the time the stake sagged when they released it, then came loose and was carried downstream. Growling with frustration, the workers retrieved it and fought to anchor it in place again.

It was not a task for which they were well suited, and that became more obvious the longer Newt watched them work. Yet, although she disliked what they were doing, she could not help seeing how hard they tried. It reminded her of her own struggles, and she saw a tiny bit of herself in the strangers. She could also see that, despite the difficulty, they were succeeding.

She stayed until evening, hoping to creep closer by dark. When she approached the seamares’ pen, she found that the night she hoped would shield her had been pushed back. On the banks of the river were strange bright spots she had never seen before. They flickered and danced, like reflections of the sun on the surface of her lagoon, and they cast a fierce light. Newt’s nape prickledin terror. Were the invaders so powerful that they could capture pieces of the sun and hold them, as they did the seamares?

Though she trembled and wished she could retreat to the beach, with its soft darkness and swish of waves, she forced herself on. When she drew closer, the bright points took on form. To her they were a nest of yellow and orange snakes writhing together toward the night sky, hissing and snapping their jaws as if the stars were prey.

Beside the fires, outlined by the fierce light, she saw the forms of sentinels. In their eyes, even at a distance, the orange light shone in glints of amber and green.

The smell was harsh and choking, as irritating to her nose as the light was to her night-widened eyes. She shuddered. Here was a foe she could not face down, for the fear it struck in her lay too deep. She took flight back into the darkness and crouched on cold sand, watching and hating those glowing, writhing nests of snakes.

The acrid smell of smoke could not drown out the scents of the seamares behind the barrier. They still reached her and somehow reproached her for turning back. She kneaded the sand fiercely with her claws, drawn on by the seamare odor and pushed back by the ashes and smoke. At last she crept forward again. The snake-nests lay on both banks of the river, but there were no dismaying lights in the river itself. It lay open to her, a dark, safe path.

Wet sand felt clammy against her pads as she limped across the flats toward the river. She waded into the shallows, the night-chilled water seeping through the fur of her legs, her belly, and her flanks. Feeling ahead with her good forepaw, she sought the bottom drop-off that would show her the channel. The only way to conceal her approach was to swim underwater in the deepest part of the river.

After poking her nose up to take a breath, Newt slipped beneath the surface and down into the main channel. Here it was deep and wide enough for her to swim. The incoming tide overcame the downstream current, helping her to glide upriver, near the channel bottom. And the strange lights unexpectedly aided her by casting a glow into the murky gloom, so she could see her way ahead.

Each time she surfaced to breathe, she made herself inhale slowly and quietly rather than gulping air. The sentries stood with their faces turned outward, away from her. No one had seen or smelled… yet.

Gradually she worked her way upriver toward the mud-beach where the seamare pen had been built. Lifting her dripping head, she stared at the barrier of poles and thorns that now rose out of the water only a few tail lengths away. Those who had made it had unwittingly aided her by extending it into midriver, where the water was deep enough to conceal her.

She floated at an angle, with only her nose above the ripples, gathering breath and strength. Then she dived and shot toward the barrier, her good foreleg stretched out with claws extended. She hit the barrier hard underwater, ignoring the thorns that sank into her paw. Pulling thorn-tangles aside, she ripped away lashed crosspieces, using her jaws to aid her good foreleg.

Sounds from the beach made her halt her destructive flurry and duck back into the depths of the channel. She hid there until her lungs were nearly bursting, expecting to hear angry roars and the noise of running feet, but nothing happened. Perhaps the noise she had made sounded loud only to her. Gasping, she surfaced, approached the barrier, and saw a horselike head rise from the water on the other side. Another followed, blowing quietly. The seamares knew what she was doing.

Feeling a sudden surge of triumph, she attacked the thorns and stakes again. One pole tipped sideways under her weight. She wrenched the lashings off another and pulled prickly branches aside, even though they stung her mouth and scraped her teeth.

She worked until she had cleared a narrow opening, then fought to widen it. Abruptly she heard a grunt and was nearly ploughed underwater when a heavy body rammed itself through the break. Another followed, and then another, as the seamares poured through. They churned the water into froth, bumped and banged her, but in her delight at having freed them, she didn’t care.

Abruptly, yowls and sounds of galloping feet began from the shore. Newt saw sentinels running along the bank, some bearing branches with the writhing snakes of light curling about their ends. Fear quickly chilled her triumph. She sought the channel depths once more, stroking and kicking hard to keep up with the escaping seamares, whose wake helped to carry her along.

It seemed to take the Named intruders a long time to realize that the attack had come from the water. They were still dashing up and down the riverbanks by the time Newt and the seamares passed the last of their beacons and had swum far enough downstream so that night could shield their escape.

Gradually the noise and confusion died into the distance, as Newt and the seamares made their way back down the loops and meanders of the river toward the sea. The honks and grunts of her big companions blended into the wash of surf in a boisterous song of freedom.

The escapees hauled themselves out onto the night-silvered gravel of the beach, with Newt doing a three-limbed frolic around them. And when they reached the jetty and were gathered once more into the herd, Newt gamboled off to her sleeping place, wet and weary but happy.

Though Thakur could see well enough in the early-morning dark to tell that the seamare pen was damaged, he had to wait until dawn to tell how badly. As the sun cast its first light over the salt fens near the estuary where the pen had been built, Thakur saw Ratha striding toward him, her shadow thrown far ahead of her and her form backlit by the dawn.

At first she stepped daintily, avoiding soggy patches or stopping to shake mud off her feet. But as the ooze deepened, she gave up and slogged through it to meet him. Wading into the chill water of the estuary, he showed her how one wall of the pen had been ripped open to free the seamares. Newt had not been content with just tearing an exit but had vented her wrath on the stick-and-lash construction, wrecking an entire section of wall where it stood in the deepest water.