Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

“I’ll set his guts on fire andthen I’ll make him eat them,” Fessran growled. “Bira, quit looking like a swatted cub. It wasn’t your fault. You only left the Red-Tongue-nest long enough to nose-touch with me.”

“He, I assume, is our black fawn-killer,” Ratha said, keeping her tone mild.

“I let him stay.” Bira looked miserably at Ratha. “He only watched. Remember? You saw. I thought everyone should be able to warm themselves.”

Ratha lowered her own head and rubbed Bira’s cheek. “There is no wrong in wanting to be kind,” she said. “We need more of that, not less.”

Bira closed her eyes and her trembling eased.“You understand. You are also kind, clan leader.”

You have helped to teach me, Ratha thought.

“Ratha’s right,” Fessran added gruffly. “It isn’t your fault. I didn’t yowl at you and I’m not going to, so lift those whiskers.”

“Can you tell me what happened? The black hunter meddled with the Red Tongue?”

“Yes. You know the way Cherfaree and I set the wood up. We like to make it tidy. When I came back from greeting Fessran, it was all a mess and someone had been pawing at the coals.”

“He tried to scuff out his tracks,” Fessran added, “but he missed a few and old eagle-eyes here spotted them. He’d torn his front toe pad in the scrap with Bira and me, and the mark was as plain as the tail on a tusker’s face.”

“Clan leader, it wouldn’t be so bad if he had just messed up the fire. But I think he stole some of it.”

“Bira, are you sure?” Fessran asked.

“There’s a bare patch where coals and embers are missing. I’ll show you.”

“I believe you, Bira,” Ratha said.

“I don’t know how he did it. If he’d used a torch, I’m sure we would have seen the flame. We weren’t that far away, and when I leave the Red-Tongue-nest, I often look back.”

Ratha’s gaze went to Fessran. “You’ve tried other ways of carrying my creature.”

“Yes, but none of them have really worked. We keep going back to torches. What rumples my fur is how can Night have figured out a way to do it when we can’t? We’re the ones who are supposed to have the smarts, right?”

“I don’t know, Fess. If he is a face-tail hunter, he has that song-thing of theirs and True-of-voice. We both saw what they can do.”

“Excuse me, clan leader,” said Bira, her voice soft but determined. “When he was watching the Red Tongue, he didn’t always look as if he was listening to their song. You saw that, too, didn’t you, clan leader?”

“Yes, I did,” said Ratha, denying the temptation not to admit it. “And it was my decision to let him stay.”

“Well, don’t claw at yourself for it,” said Fessran.

“Yes, if I need clawing, no doubt you’ll do it.” Ratha paced restlessly. “We have to think hard about this. If the black hunter took the Red Tongue, he means to use it.”

“How could he know anything …?” began Bira.

Ratha turned abruptly, sweeping the air with her tail.“That doesn’t matter. We must find him and take the Red Tongue back. We also must tell True-of-voice what has happened. Fessran, you assemble a tracking party, since you know the black one’s prints. Bira, find Thistle-chaser and Quiet Hunter. Let them know what has happened and send them to True-of-voice. Ask him to help us find the renegade before Night harms anyone. I’ll get Thakur and join you.”

Fessran leaped up, her whiskers bristling.“We’ll get that belly-biter!”

“Fess,” Ratha paused. “Don’t kill him unless there is no other way to stop him. We have to find out why he did this.”

“Trust me, clan leader,” Fessran answered. Ratha then looked at Bira, who said, “I’ve put my fire out and get Thistle,” and galloped away, Fessran following.

Ratha looked after them, thinking, I have often feared that the Red Tongue would be stolen from us. Now it has happened. She found herself panting, and then she shook her pelt and slowed her breathing. She couldn’t waste time in panic.

Thakur, I need you. Please be there.

At the meadow’s far end, she found the herding teacher, with his students and the practice animals. As soon as he heard her, he sent the younger cubs back to their mothers and asked Cherfan and the herders to take charge of the older cubs and the animals. Fear quickening her steps, Ratha ran beside Thakur toward the tail leading to the hunters’ land. On the way they joined up with Thistle-chaser and Quiet Hunter. Bira took everyone’s treelings, promising to hide them safely in the trees. Ratha agreed with Bira that this task was not for treelings.

There was no need to seek out True-of-voice. He and his people met the Named at the boundary of the hunters’ territory. The solemn look in his eyes made Ratha’s stomach sink.

Quiet Hunter and Thistle approached the gray hunter leader, but the intensity in his gaze turned them back. He clearly did not want to talk.

Without words or gestures, he turned abruptly, looking back, his eyes commanding her and the Named to follow.

Ratha led her people slowly after him. Thakur paced beside her, slightly behind and so close that his whiskers brushed her shoulder. Quiet Hunter walked as close to True-of-voice as he could get, while Thistle-chaser took up the same position as Thakur on Ratha’s opposite side.

Ratha hoped that it wasn’t Fessran’s tracking party that had inadvertently caused trouble by invading the hunters’ land too suddenly.

“I don’t think it was Fessran,” Thakur said quietly. “I am sorry, but what you tried to prevent has happened. We are no longer the only ones who have the Red Tongue.”

Ratha could only lean forward into the wind and keep walking, wondering what she and her people would find. From the look on True-of-voice’s face, it was not something he welcomed.

Had the black renegade set a blaze that destroyed the other tribe’s hunting ground? Or worse?

Their destination was a canyon that cut into the rolling hills east of the hunters’ plain. Ratha saw it first from a distance, the tumbling smoke that belched from the canyon mouth. When they got closer, she stepped in the water of a creek that was gray and turbid with ash. The creek was spilling down from the canyon. As she shook the mud-ash from her feet, she smelled and heard the fire.

When they got closer, she saw her creature gone wild and raging in the dry, resin-filled pines that filled that cut in the earth. It was a blaze no longer, but a storm of flame, creating its own strong wind up the canyon.

Enveloping and devouring brush and trees, the firestorm made a sound no longer a hiss or a roar but a ground-shaking thunder. It left no blackened crags or stumps but burned and blasted entire trees to coals and powder that thickened the air. Ratha braced herself back against the wind that was trying to suck her off her feet and into the firestorm. It flew the tip of her tail nearly to her ear and her whiskers nearly straight in front of her face.

Frantically she thought of Fessran. Had she sent her friend into this maelstrom?

True-of-voice led his group to the side, out of the strongest wind. Ratha and the Named followed. He stood still on a small rise. Ratha, peering through the roiling smoke, saw Quiet Hunter’s dun coat moving among the hunters’ browns and grays. He was leaving True-of-voice and coming to her. Thistle-chaser joined him when he reached the clan.

Ratha, searching the surrounding hills for Fessran and the trackers, spotted movement and caught familiar smells. Soon Fessran and her party were close enough to see. They were ash-dusted and soot-streaked, but none looked injured. Much as she wanted to run out and greet the Firekeeper and her searchers, she needed to hear what news Quiet Hunter had brought from True-of-voice.