Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

“Clan leader, let me stay and help,” Bundi asked, unexpectedly.

“Why?”

“Because I have felt the Red Tongue’s touch. Because of this,” Bundi said, lifting his head to show the burnscars that ran down his neck and shoulder.

Because you know the pain that the hunter dead felt before my creature took their lives.

Ratha took a breath.“You can stay then, Bundi. Ashon, you lead the older cubs back. Go to Drani. She’s taking care of the nurslings.”

The silver-gray youngster gathered up his peers and departed for clan ground.

Ratha then found Thistle-chaser and Quiet Hunter, asking them to go over to True-of-voice’s group so that they could learn where the dead were to be taken. Thistle wanted to stay with the Named and work alongside her mother.

“No, I need you to go with the hunters,” Ratha told her firmly.

Thistle was stubborn.“Am as strong as Fessran. Won’t get belly-sick at smells. If, maybe, follow you as clan leader, need to take on same duties.”

“Thistle, I know you are willing. Right now I need you to go with the hunters and not argue.”

“Won’t argue, then. Will do.”

Ratha rubbed her forehead against her daughter’s. They had only begun to approach the idea that Thistle-chaser might lead the Named one day, when Ratha grew too old and feeble. Initially it had seemed ridiculous, but as Ratha watched Thistle growing, recovering from the injuries received as a cub, and, most of all, developing in character, the possibility had grown stronger.

Thistle rubbed alongside her with the affectionate tail-flop, then joined Quiet Hunter, who had been waiting nearby. Both headed across the intervening distance to True-of-voice and the hunter tribe. Ratha let her gaze rest on them only briefly, cradling the joy that the young couple gave her, then letting it go.

She turned to the remaining clan members.

“We’ll start at the canyon entrance. Space yourselves across so that we don’t miss anything.”

Heads lowered, shoulders hunched, the Named started up the fire-scoured canyon. Ratha was in the center, and they spread out to either side of her. Some hunters came across and joined them, filling up the gaps. Ratha noticed that Thakur took up a place downwind of her and two positions away, so that his scent wouldn’t distract her, but he could still speak to her.

The air was still, heavy with haze.

The first body they found was not burned or heat-damaged. The hunter lay on her side, as if she had fallen asleep.

“Killed by the Red Tongue’s breath,” said Thakur.

Ratha knew the sting of smoke in her throat. Sometimes it got so thick, it made her cough and gasp.

The body might be untouched, but Ratha knew that the death had been as wretched as any other in the canyon.

“Put that one where we can find it on the way out. No sense in dragging it up and back,” Ratha instructed.

They came across two more, both smoke-killed. Ratha recognized the face, but she couldn’t remember the name.

“Bent Whiskers,” said Thakur softly. “I knew her. I’ll take her.”

I knew her, too. Just a little.

Before Ratha could move, Cherfan grabbed the scruff of the other.“This may not be as bad as I feared,” he mumbled through his mouthful of fur.

“Just put them aside,” Ratha said, ignoring the clenching sensation in her stomach. “With the first.” She listened to the soft sounds as Thakur and Cherfan dragged the slain away. She didn’t watch.

The line of Named and hunters moved carefully up the floor of the ravaged cut in the earth.

When they found the next few dead hunters, Cherfan admitted that he was wrong. It was as bad as he had feared, and worse.

Ratha had seen Un-Named ones wounded or killed by her creature, but she never realized how bone could be so twisted by intense heat, how flesh and skin could be roasted, seared, charred into an ugly black crust that bled when it broke open.

A growing numbness in her mind offered an escape, but she chose not to take it. Instead, she forced her senses to accept it all, the beyond-bitter taste of the charred crust that covered the bodies, the way it broke beneath her fangs and the gritty crunch of it in her teeth. The acrid, corrosive smell ate its way into her nose. Her eyes blurred so that she couldn’t tell if the red beneath the crust when it crumbled was still-glowing ember or once-living flesh.

Next to her, someone retched, and that smell joined the other foulness.

She tightened her belly against sickness. The offer of numbness rose again, but this time she drove it off with rage against the black renegade. He was the one, not she. He stole coals from the watch-fire, he hid them and tended them, and he tried to use them to assist the hunters in capturing and killing face-tails. This hellishness that surrounded her now was of his making, not hers. She imagined what she would do to him if she caught him, adding to Fessran’s expressed intentions with a few of her own.

She made a shield of her anger and cast it all about her, willing it to harden and defend her from all other feelings, but even as she fanned rage’s flame, she felt it falter. The thoughts she coaxed from her anger began to repulse her, and then sicken her until she, too, retched and drooled on the ground.

Her will made her shaking legs move, stretched her neck out, made her mouth open so that she could fasten her teeth in the next one of the slain, but a paw appeared in her tunneling vision, stopping her. She thought at first it was Thakur — and, yes, he stood nearby — but the paw was Bundi’s.

“Clan leader, let me take this one,” the herder said, and a flash of memory told her why he was in the line of searchers.

The horrible thing was pulled out of her vision and away from her nose. She could only gasp her gratitude since her tail had become so heavy that she couldn’t lift it in acknowledgment. Now it was Thakur beside her, steadying her.

“I doubt if it helps to know this, yearling, but True-of-voice hasn’t shirked this duty either.”

Her tongue feeling the acid-etched surface of her fangs, Ratha turned her head to one side. Thakur was right. True-of-voice was in the line with some of the other hunters. Even as she watched, he had found another of his dead and was pawing at her to turn her over. It wasn’t an easy task, for the heat had shortened the ligaments in her back so that she was bowed, the back of her head touching the base of her tail. Her mouth was frozen open, revealing teeth that were nearly sabers. One had broken, the fracture line sparking another of Ratha’s memories. Tooth-broke-on-a-bone.

She watched True-of-voice. He positioned the body so that he and another hunter could pick it up. Although it was a struggle, he moved so gently, so carefully, so… reverently … that Ratha felt her throat tighten. What was he thinking, feeling? Did he understand why this had happened? Did he hate Night-who-eats-stars? Did he hate the clan now, and was he planning revenge on them?

“Can you go on, Ratha?” Thakur asked softly.

She could and did, again taking up her position in the line. Thakur rolled in ash, disguising his scent so that he could stay beside Ratha without distracting her.

She saw True-of-voice’s people working alongside her own and wondered what they thought and felt.

The last body was up in a tree. True-of-voice circled the scorched pine, looking up. Ratha saw that he wanted to climb it, but like Cherfan, he was too large.

“I’ll get it,” she said. “I haven’t done a lot yet. Let me at least do this.”

“I’ll get Thistle,” said Thakur. “She’ll tell True-of-voice what you want to do.”

“Hasn’t she gone with the hunters?”

“No, they haven’t left yet.”