For a moment all was confusion, with water boiling like a piranha attack and two tiger tails whipping spray, then Ruko shot into sight, his balance regained, perched on one leg like a crane. Onlookers paused in their cheering to wonder what might happen. All grunted in unison as Jedit's head and torso boiled up from the shallow bottom. With a savage snarl, Ruko kicked his cocked foot and banged Jedit boldly under his jaw. Muddy water flew in a spray as Jedit's head whipped back.
Howling with laughter, Ruko jumped-straight into Jedit's out-thrust arm. A hand like a spear rammed Ruko's belly and cost him his breath. The chief scout sagged around the arm, and Jedit was ready. With a roundhouse swing from far behind, Jedit punched Ruko's jaw so hard two teeth cracked. The scout still hung on Jedit's forearm, sagging, fighting for wind and footing. Jedit gave him neither. Yanking his arm close, Jedit slammed the scout again and laid him on the riverbank.
Pouncing like an eagle, Jedit blasted another fist into Ruko's belly, half-crippling the scout and probably splitting his liver. Growling like a windstorm, Jedit rammed claws into Ruko's shoulder to pin him in place. Whipping his free hand in the air, Jedit extended five fearsome razor claws like flaked chert.
"I'll tear your throat out! I'll-"
A hard-swung spear haft walloped Jedit's skull just below the ear. A second haft from the opposite direction caught him on the rebound. Smacked nearly senseless, the tiger-man collapsed like a fallen leaf onto the muddy bank beside his enemy. Ruko's twin scouts kept their spears aloft like clubs.
One pronounced, "No claws!"
Head spinning in a star-spangled swirl, Jedit barely heard a scout ask an elder, "What shall we do, milord?"
"Hang him and let him ripen?" asked the other.
"He's Musata's cub," rasped the elder.
Dimly, Jedit heard his mother heave a great sigh over her wayward child's antics. "Yes, that's best. Hang him up."
Jedit heard a great roar like the river running wild, then no more.
Hours later, crickets chirruped and nightjars cooed as evening stippled the jungle canopy with scattershot stars.
A lovely sight, thought Jedit, except the stars were framed by wooden bars. He'd awoken with a crashing headache that forced him to lie still or else vomit.
Wooden bars pressed against his spine and rump. One striped leg hung between the bottom bars, so his toes dangled in cool air. "The Birdcage" was a stout cell made of green saplings suspended forty feet high between two leafy teak trees. The bars extended past the cell's six corners, so a prisoner couldn't slash the rope bindings. A determined tiger could have chewed through the green wood and clambered down a tree, but most miscreants didn't bother. The Birdcage imposed public humiliation and cramped confinement, two things that free-roaming tigers hated, but by common law they could suffer only a single day. Jedit could endure twenty-four hours. He'd perched here a dozen times in cubhood and youth.
With naught to do, Jedit watched the tribal meeting on the village square forty feet down and two hundred feet off. Hundreds of tawny tigers crouched on their haunches, tails twirling and twitching as they swapped opinions in low voices like buzzing bees. As news had spread, all afternoon and evening far-flung tigers had trooped in. All gawked at the alien man who'd stepped from misty legend square into their midst.
Johan sat cross-legged in a cage not high in a tree but rather balanced on eight poles driven into the ground, a mere nine feet in the air. Deeming him helpless without claws, the tribal council had ordered him kept close to satisfy the tribe's curiosity. The prison was tucked behind the rambling common hut where the council debated. Two of Ruko's scouts paced underneath the cage. From above, Jedit concluded that if Johan worried about his fate at the hands of savage tigers, he gave no sign. He sat immobile with eyes closed. Occasionally his head swayed as if he tossed in a dream.
Hanging high in the air, Jedit Ojanen whipped his tail and felt the cage swing in response. He wished for a stone to lob at Johan's cage. Young, impulsive, and rash, Jedit resented the queer stranger and blamed him for his troubles. The warrior had argued passionately for Johan's life, yet the man hardly seemed to care if he were executed at moonset or not. Even a rabbit fought for its life, Jedit knew, so why not this skinned rabbit of a man? The jailbird heaved a great sigh, unconsciously imitating his mother.
"Jedit!" A carrying whisper.
Jedit's ears swiveled. He knew that voice.
On a stout branch thirty feet off crouched Hestia. Small and lithe, to a human she would be invisible in darkness, her tawny hide and black stripes matching the silvered moonlight. To Jedit's keen vision, she might as well have been outlined in fire. Before he could answer her call, Hestia wriggled her haunches and leaped.
The wooden cage bobbed and swayed sickeningly as Hestia pounced atop. For a stomach-lurching instant Jedit thought the whole contraption would plummet and shatter on the jungle floor. Slowly the erratic swinging stilled. Jedit squinted through a headache at the she-cat's round face. Hestia's face stripes were a lighter hue than most tiger's, almost tan like a lion's, and her eyes glowed gold like distant fires. She wore a halter of red painted with brown diamonds down the breastbone. A necklace of brown and red beads swung at her jabot of white fur.
Hestia's flaring gold eyes peered at Jedit through the wooden bars. Mischievously, she swiveled her hips and clawed feet to set the birdcage swinging again. Jedit jolted and bleated at her to stop. She giggled.
"Serves you right." Hestia's sibilant purr did not carry. "I should slash the ties and let you crash. Broken bones would keep you abed, and then I could nurse you back to health. The only time I see you is when you're in strife."
She cocked a hip to rock the cage again. Jedit jolted, but as a feint. Uncoiling, he shot a big paw through the bars and snagged her foot. Hestia chirped as her leg was dragged between the bars, and her rump thumped on wood.
"Ow! Bully!"
"Bully?" Jedit released her ankle. "How shall I show my affection? Bite your neck? Drag home a water buffalo? Or bring you Ruko's head as a trophy to hang from your doorway?"
"It would stink and draw flies." The tigress rocked gently, making the cage sway, lulling as a cradle. "Why must our people make war all the time? If we can't fight the Khyyiani or the Hooraree or the Sulaki, we Efravans war among ourselves."
"It's traditional. What else can occupy us in paradise? Food and water are plentiful, the weather is pleasant, and there's no one else to bother." Jedit leaned back, mildly queasy. His head throbbed viciously. "What say the elders?"
"I shan't tell you-and don't!" Crouched atop the cage, Hestia flicked her foot as Jedit reached. "Why should I? You don't care about anyone but yourself."
"I care about my father," Jedit corrected in a whisper, "and my mother… and our tribe's past and future."
"Not that again," sighed Hestia. Idly she peeled bark with a claw.
"Yes, that again. Do you know that manling-he's a magician-hit the target first shot when I mentioned why my father journeyed west? He recognized immediately that we tigerfolk have reached the end of our trail. That our people have expanded westward since forever but can't go farther because the desert blocks our way!"
"What matter?" Hestia gazed up at the stars, giving Jedit a silhouette of her lovely muzzle and delicate ears. "Your father didn't need to strike into the desert! Legends say there's nothing but sand forever-"
"Our legends are wrong, as the manling's presence proves." Jedit gazed down at the village. The tribe's gossip and arguing masked their conversation. "There's a whole world of men! Hardly extinct! It would benefit our tribe to meet them and learn from them. We might even take our place among them. Our tribe was great once and accomplished miracles, to hear the legends. Why not again? Think how crowded we grow in this valley. We can't expand forever! If the tribe split, half could journey west…"