“Fessran, I would do you no kindness by allowing you to keep them. What will happen when these cubs grow up and you have to face the truth about them? What will happen when the mating season comes? We won’t be able to keep them from mating, any more than we could keep Shongshar from it. Do you want to see more litters like this? Do you want to birth cubs like this?”
“No!” Fessran cried. “No, not if you are right about them. But you could be wrong.”
Ratha snatched the little male and placed him so that the light from outside the lair fell across his face. “Go on, look at him,” she hissed. “Look at him and tell me if you really think I’m wrong.” She seized him by the scruff and held him up before Fessran.
The cub hung in her jaws, making no effort to struggle. Fessran peered into his face, studying him intently. Something like pity and revulsion came into her eyes and she turned her head away.
“All right, take him,” she said harshly. “Take the female, too; she’s the same.”
Ratha put the cub down long enough to say, “Go back to your family, Fessran. Go back to your little daughter who is starting to talk. Think how proud you will be when you bring your cubs before the clan to be given names.”
She picked the litterling up and carried him from the den.
Outside, she paused in front of Shongshar and put the cub on the ground to free her jaws. “These cubs are yours,” she said. “If you still want to take them and abandon them yourself, I will trust you.”
“No, clan leader,” he answered. “You were the one who asked for that promise. You have said my cubs must die. I can’t fight you, but I won’t help you either.”
She took a breath. “All right. They are my responsibility now. I accept that.”
She picked up the cub again, but Shongshar stood, blocking her way. His orange eyes burned with grief, but what frightened Ratha was the sudden hate that flared in their depths. It was as if she were looking into the eyes of an old bitter enemy. Ratha felt her nape and back itch as the hair lifted; she narrowed her eyes and growled, sweeping her tail from side to side. Shongshar moved out of her way, but as Ratha passed him she sensed that she had not won the confrontation, she had only delayed it.
Fessran crawled out of the den, her coat rumpled. Without looking at the clan leader, she said, “Come with me, Shongshar. I am having trouble being a Firekeeper leader and raising a family at the same time. Cherfan isn’t interested in my cubs. If I share my family with you, it will help both of us.”
Shongshar lowered his head and paced to Fessran’s side. Neither of them looked back at Ratha as they left.
When Shongshar and Fessran had gone, Thakur came out of the brush and fetched the female cub from the lair.
Carrying the cubs in their mouths, the two left clan ground and trotted toward the hazy shapes of the mountains beneath the rising sun. Ratha’s jaw was soon aching from straining against the male cub’s weight, but she forced herself to go on carrying him, without stopping to rest. Something told her to get these litterlings as far from clan territory as possible.
Part of her started to go numb as she traveled, and it wasn’t just her jaw. Her legs seemed to go on by themselves while her mind functioned only enough to choose the path. The litterlings, seemingly dazed, never cried or struggled, which made them seem more like lifeless burdens than living creatures.
For the rest of the day Ratha and Thakur traveled over plains and foothills until they reached the mountains. Among the pine forests that covered the lower slopes, they found a stream leading up through a shallow canyon until it entered a sheltered meadow. The surrounding canyon walls protected the meadow from wind and the stream lay close by. When the two saw the enclosed pasture, they knew they had come far enough.
As soon as Thakur let the female cub down, she began stalking a large beetle that clung to a swaying stem. She wriggled, pounced, and then Ratha heard her jaws crunch on the insect. The litterling grimaced in disgust at the taste but she gulped it down.
Ratha stared at her, then at Thakur as he said, “Hmm. If she can eat insects, there is a chance that she and her brother may survive here.”
“Maybe. Fessran said they had begun to eat chewed meat.”
She watched the cubs as they romped around their new home. When they reached the far end of the meadow, she felt Thakur nudge her. “We should go now,” he said softly.
He trotted away downstream and, after one last look at Shongshar’s cubs, Ratha followed.
She said little on the journey back to clan ground. Although there was some hope that the abandoned young might survive, she knew she couldn’t risk telling Shongshar where they had been left. Thakur led the way back and she paced after him, wondering if she would ever lose the weariness of body and spirit that had crept over her, numbing her feelings.
Chapter Ten
For a while after Thakur and Ratha returned to clan ground, he noticed that she was unusually subdued and did not appear among the Named any more often than she had to. She spent much time in her den, her head resting on her paws, her eyes staring ahead at nothing.
“It would have been no easier for me if Shongshar had taken his cubs out and abandoned them,” she muttered in response to Thakur’s gentle questioning. “It was I who allowed him into the clan to sire those cubs and it was I who decided he must lose them. I wish I could forget that they were ever born, but I keep seeing those little faces before me.”
“You didn’t kill the cubs,” Thakur pointed out. “We chose a place for them where there is food and they will be safe.”
“Until the next hungry beast comes along. It doesn’t really matter. Shongshar thinks they are dead and so does everyone else who knew about them. Only you and I know that they may survive, at least for a little while.”
She sighed, laid her head back on her paws and stared away again, not noticing when Aree hopped up on her and began to groom her pelt. Thakur called the treeling back again, knowing that Ratha’s distress was something she would have to come to terms with by herself; he couldn’t help her. He wondered if the faces she saw in her waking dreams were those of Shongshar’s cubs or of her own lost young.
Gradually she came out of her lassitude, but whether she had resolved her feelings or just buried them, Thakur couldn’t tell. As much as he wanted to stay with her and comfort her, he had other duties that called him. The cubs in the spring litters were now old enough so that he would soon have to begin training some of them as herders.
“It’s too early to wake up,” Thakur grumbled, opening one eye at his treeling. Aree cocked his head at him and evaded his sleepy paw. For some reason the creature was unusually frisky. On all fours he galloped to the threshold of the den, poked his nose out, galloped back and leaped on Thakur. The creature pawed his fur and told him, with various treeling noises, what he thought of those who snored in their dens while there was such a beautiful morning outside.
The scolding, plus the impact Aree had made when he landed on him, brought Thakur fully awake. “I’m feeding you too much,” he growled at the treeling. “You’re getting heavy.” The treeling had grown rapidly, reaching his adult size. Now when Aree stood beside Thakur on all fours, his back reached the level of the herding teacher’s belly. With his legs and tail outstretched, he could extend himself from Thakur’s shoulder to withers.
Aree looked at Thakur with such wide soulful eyes that he knew he must feed his creature. The herding teacher crawled wearily out of his den and found a dead tree that was covered with bark-beetles. Aree climbed up and munched on the insects until he was sated.
Thakur’s belly was still comfortably full from the previous day’s herdbeast kill, so he would not have to eat for a few days. He shivered as the cold in the early morning air crept into his coat. The mothers would eventually bring their cubs to the meadow and the first day’s teaching would begin, but it was still much too early.