Клэр Белл - The Named - The Complete Series

She found that although her conscious self might have forgotten the techniques of hunting birds and other small prey, her body remembered. Her ears trembled to hear the betraying rustles in the brush, and when she heard them, her body dropped into a stalking crouch, leaving part of her mind to watch.

She was thankful, for she drew no enjoyment from this hunt other than the knowledge that it would put food in the cubs’ bellies.

In her hurry, she badly mauled her catches when she made them, but between her and Thakur, she had enough to feed the cubs and enough left over to provide for herself and the others.

“I miss Bira. I hope I don’t have to teach Cherfan how to hunt,” she said while she and Thakur were defeathering and descaling their prizes. “He’d be crashing through the bushes scaring everything away. But we couldn’t have saved the cubs without him.”

When they brought the food back, the widened eyes, lifted whiskers, and sharpened scents told her everyone was hungry. They all backed away and waited while she and Thakur fed the two cub-nurses all that they could hold.

She told them they didn’t have to regurgitate everything they ate for cub-feeding — they should keep some down, since they would need it later.

While Cherfan and Mondir did the messy job, she shared the rest out with the others.

“Come on, Ashon, eat,” she heard Khushi say.

“The fish is good,” the cub replied, “but this bird-stuff … it doesn’t taste bad, but it feels funny in my mouth.”

“Well, get used to it, stripling, or you’ll lose it to Mishanti.”

“Or me,” grunted Cherfan, wiping his jowls with the back of his paw and raising his head from the cubs. “This bunch is insatiable.”

Ratha thought she would have no appetite, but the exercise of hunting brought it back, at least a little. And maybe the courageous banter among the Named helped to lift her spirits.

Courageous because she sensed that everyone, even Bundi and Mishanti, knew at bottom how bad things really were. In one blow, the Named had been stripped of everything they valued and needed: their land, their herdbeasts, the Red Tongue — even all their females but one had been captured.

New Singer had taken the fire-den, the source for all the brands and campfires. In capturing Bira and Fessran along with other Firekeeper females, he had also taken the means to keep fire alive and use it, if he so chose. Why then had his gang seized Thistle, Drani, and the others who were not Firekeepers?

The answer emerged out of Ratha’s memories of the fight and what followed. Her fur stiffened as she realized what New Singer and his group wanted from the imprisoned females.

“I thought you’d catch that prey soon,” Thakur said.

“I’m so stupid … I never thought … All males, no females. Young toms, eager to mate. That’s it, isn’t it, Thakur?”

“I don’t believe it was stupidity that made you avoid the idea,” Thakur answered gently and added, “I have somewhat the same problem, which is why it took me so long to see the answer.”

For us, mating is more than just coupling. There is love, and in love there is pain. Not just the pain of losing the one you choose, but the pain of looking at the young you birth and seeing eyes that will never see the world as you do, tongues that will never speak, minds that can never understand. And that the one you chose brought this upon you, or could bring it upon you, through no fault of his own.

That is why neither Thakur nor I could understand this. Though I may take a male in the courting season while he exiles himself instead, neither of us dares to love.

We are so similar, so close. Is that why I want him? I cannot think of that now.

“Tell me what happened,” Ratha said. “Mating is part of it, but killing cubs?”

“This is how things went,” Thakur began as the others settled close by.

Ratha stopped him.“Wait, we must post a watch.” She assigned Khushi and Bundi the task.

“I’ll speak loud enough so that they can hear as well,” said Thakur, and started again.

At first Ratha didn’t understand why he was recounting episodes such as the escaping face-tails, the canyon fire that killed True-of-voice’s hunters, and the schism within the other leader’s ranks that ejected New Singer and the other young hunter males.

Then, gradually, she began to see the sinews that bound the parts together.

“The ones slain in the canyon fire were all female,” Thakur emphasized. “Many hunter females died. The few females left would have been torn to pieces by both the old and young males fighting for them. True-of-voice had no choice. He had to drive the younger males out.” Thakur paused. “I’m not saying that he consciously decided to do this. I’m saying that something in him or the song told him he had to.”

“So that is why the song turned ‘black’ for Quiet Hunter and those like him,” Ratha muttered.

“And when you have a bunch of randy young toms, as my sweet Fessran would say,” said Cherfan who had awakened and come over with Mondir, leaving the cubs sleeping in a big pile, “they’ll go to the nearest source. And they did. Us.”

“How can they do that?” Ashon wrinkled his young nose. “It sounds so strange. We don’t do these things.”

Thakur looked at the half-grown male. His voice deepened, urging Ratha to listen closely.“We don’t do these things now, Ashon. But we used to do them.”

A vibrating silence followed his words, then a babble of protest.

“What?”

“No, we’d never—”

“Where did you hear that, herding teacher?”

“Let Thakur speak,” Ratha commanded, although she wanted to object as well.

Thakur continued,“My mother, Reshara, told me. I believe her, because it all makes sense. Back before Meoran’s rule, back before Baire and many clan leaders before him, when the Named were so many that we had to form separate clans, our ways were different. Reshara learned this from her mother, who heard it from her own, and so on. We had learned to herd instead of stalking, and our kind were flourishing.”

“There was such a time?” Ashon asked, his eyes wide.

“Yes, there was,” Thakur answered. “Before the coming of the Un-Named. That is another story. For now, what matters is that, although our people spoke and thought, they were more like beasts than we are now.”

“How did the change happen?” asked Khushi. “I mean from being beasts to not being beasts?”

“It just did. No one really knows how.”

“We’re still beasts. Look at Cherfan.” This was from Mondir.

“Maybe so,” Thakur said, as the big herder yawned off the insult, “but there’s something else in us.”

“Go on,” Ratha said.

“More males were born among us than females. The older males got the females, but they had to fight the younger ones for that right. To keep mating fights from tearing up our tribes, clan leaders had to force the younger males out. These exiles from one tribe became invaders of another, driving that tribe’s elders off and mating with the females. The usurpers killed any cubs sired by the old males. The invaders didn’t want to waste effort raising them when they could have sons and daughters of their own.”

“It makes sense in a cruel way,” said Khushi.

“It did. In some ways we were crueler than we are now.”

“If it made sense,” Ratha asked, “why did we stop?”

“When the Un-Named began attacking us, our numbers fell. We couldn’t afford to kill or drive out any of our own kind. That, in part, explains why we are different now. Why we care more about one another and our young.”

“So we became kinder. In order to survive,” Ratha mused. “Bira would like to hear that.” She paused. “So True-of-voice and New Singer are doing as our clan used to.”